CHAPTER IX.

THE BEACONS.

Impetuous is the channel where her strait receives the full rush of the North sea, and very turbulent is the sea of Brittany, rushing over basaltic shoals in swift and furious rapids. But the gulf of Gascony, from Cordouan to Biarritz, is just one long maritime contradiction, one enigma of mighty strifes. As she goes to the southward, she suddenly becomes extraordinarily deep, as though her waters sank, on the instant into some vast and fathomless abyss. Passing over that sudden and immense depth, the onward wave under the impulse of the terrible pressure leaps upward to a height and onward with a velocity unequalled by any other of our seas. The great surge from the north-west is the motive-power of this huge liquid machinery; from a little more north it threatens to crush Saint-Jean-de-Luz; farther west it repels the Gironde, and crowns with her terrible billows the luckless Cordouan.

That poor Cordouan, that respectable martyr of the seas and victim of the tempests, is only too little known. I believe it is the oldest of all the European beacons. At all events, only one, the celebrated Genoese lantern, can rival it in antiquity. But there is a vast difference between them. The Genoese, crowning a fort and solidly seated upon solid rock, looks smilingly, almost scornfully, down upon the impotently furious storms. But Cordouan is upon a shoal which the water never wholly leaves. And, in truth, he was a bold man who conceived the notion of erecting a beacon here, amidst the waters; what say I? in the eternal wave-combat between such a river and such a sea. From one or the other, it, at every instant, receives tremendous blows. Yes, even the Gironde urged on the one hand by the winds, and on the other by the rude torrents from the Pyrenees, assails this stern calm guardian, as though it were responsible for the assailing and repelling fury of the ocean.

Yet, Cordouan is the only saving and consoling light that gleams over this stormy sea. Run before the north wind, and miss Cordouan, and verily, my storm-tossed brother, you are in very real danger; you, likely enough, will fail to sight Arcachon. This sea, most stormy among seas, is also the darkest. At night, storm-driven upon that sea, there is no guiding mark, if you miss the beneficent light.

During our whole six months stay upon this coast, our usual contemplation, I had almost said, our almost sole companion, was the beacon of Cordouan. We felt that this guardian of the sea, this constant watchman over the strait became less a mere building than an actually living and intelligent _person_. Standing erect over the vast western horizon, it shows itself under a hundred various aspects. Now it is gilded, glorified by the setting sun; anon, pale and indistinct amidst the shifting mists, it tells us nothing of good augury. At evening, when suddenly it flashes its ruddy and glowing light athwart the heaving waters, it looks like some zealous inspector impressed and anxious in its conscious and deep responsibility. Whatever happens from the seaward, our Cordouan is held responsible for it. Throwing his ruddy beams into the gloom of the tempest, he, the preserver, is held to be the cause of that which he only, and savingly, exhibits. Thus, only too often, it is that genius is accused of evoking the evils which it exposes only that it may reform them. We, also, were ourselves thus unjust towards Cordouan. Was he late in displaying his guiding light? How ready we were to exclaim: "Cordouan, Cordouan, pale phantom, can you show yourself only to conjure up the storm, and the storm fiend?"

And yet I believe, quite firmly, that to Cordouan thirty of our fellows owed their lives in the great storm of October. Their vessel was a total wreck, but they escaped with their lives.

It is much that we can see our shipwrecking, to go down in full light, knowing exactly where we are, what are our perils, and what chances we have of evading or overcoming them. "Great God! If we must perish, give us to perish in the broad, bright light of day!"

When the ship of which I speak, driven by the strong surge from the open sea, reached this shore in the deep night, there were a thousand chances to one against her making her way into the Gironde. On her starboard the bright point of the Grave warned her off from Medoc; on her larboard the little beacon of Saint-Palais showed her the dangerous rock of the Grand'Caute on the Saintonge side; and between those fixed white lights, high over the central shoal flashed the ruddy Cordouan, showing from moment to moment the only safe channel.

By a desperate effort she got through, but only, and barely; wind, wave, and current conspired to drive her on Saint-Palais. The saving light showed the much harrassed, but still undaunted crew, where only lay their chance of safety from the driving sea behind and the terrible sands in front. Fearing, yet daring, they leaped, fell, I know not how or where, and were saved, bruised, fainting,--but still living.

Who can even imagine how many ships and how many men are saved by these beneficent beacons? Light, suddenly dispelling the dense shadows of those horrible nights when the bravest lose their courage and their presence of mind, not only points the path, but clears the head and strengthens the heart. It is a great moral support to be able to say in some mortal peril, "Again! Again! Haul away my brothers, be bold! Though wind and wave are both against us, we are not alone. See, yonder! Humanity is still watching over us, and guiding us from yonder lofty tower!"

The seamen of the old times, ever hugging the shore, and anxiously marking every headland, were still more in need than we are of the friendly beacon light. The Etruscans, we are told, first kept the night-fires burning upon their sacred stones; the beacon was at once an altar, a temple, a column, and a watch tower. The Celts, too, had their round towers which were beacons also; the most important of them were built on precisely those points where the friendly light could most widely flash over the dark waters; and the Romans lit up watch fires from height to height and promontory to promontory along their whole shores of the Mediterranean.

The great terror of the Northern sea kings, and the perilled and trembling life of the dark middle age, put out all those guiding and saving lights. The people cared not to favor the inroad of the sea rover; the sea was an object of dread, almost of hatred. Every ship was an enemy, and, if it ran aground, was deemed lawful as well as unpitied prey. The pillage of a wreck was the gain of the noble; the _noble_ and the _wrecker_ were one! The Count de Leon, made wealthy by the fatal shoal upon his County's shore, said of that murderous rock, that it was "a precious stone, far more precious than any that glitters in a kingly crown."

Even in our own time, innocently, the poor fishermen have, again and again, by those fires which they have kindled upon the beach, seduced our poor seamen into shipwreck and death. The very beacons themselves have, not seldom, played the bad part of the false hearted wrecker, alluring, only to betray; so easy is it to mistake one light for another. Now and then, that mistake, so readily made, leads to very horrible consequences.

It was France, who, at the close of her great wars, took the lead in making the lighthouse the great saviour of the benighted and well nigh wrecked seamen. Provided with that great refracting lamp of Fresnel, (a lantern equal to four thousand common ones, and throwing its ruddy gleam over a dozen, or so, of leagues), it can cast, that good modern beacon, its directing and saving light, hither and thither so that strait and shoal are made visible and safe in the deep midnight as in the full broad glow of the bright noon. To the sailor, who steers by the stars, this invention gave him, as it were, a new heaven and added constellations. Planets, fixed stars, all were created anew for him, and in those newly invented constellations there was even an improvement upon the celestial lights, in the variety of color, intensity and duration, of their glow and of their flashing. To some, we gave the calm, fixed, pale and steady gleaming which sufficed for the tranquil night and the comparatively safe sea; to others, the revolving and flashing, and fierce and ruddy glow that shone to every point of the compass. These latter, like the phosphoric creatures of the deep, palpitate and flash fitfully, now gleaming and anon paling, now leaping into dazzling glow, and anon dying into deepest darkness. In the darkest and most tempestuous nights, they are ever restless as Ocean's self, and seem to give him back motion for motion, and gleam for gleam to the lurid and fitful lightnings.

Let us remember that in 1826, and even as late as 1830, our seas were still terrible in their drear darkness. In all Europe there were but few lighthouses; in Africa, there was but the single one on the Cape, and, in all vast Asia there were only those of Bombay, Calcutta, and Madras, while the whole vast extent of South America displayed not even one. Since the latter date all nations following, imitating, even rivaling, France, have said, on every bold headland that overlooks every dangerous shoal and strait have said "Let there be light!" and every where the friendly light, gleams tranquilly, or fitfully flashes.

Just here I should like you to make with me the circumnavigation of our seas from Dunkirk to Biarritz, and to take a survey of our lighthouses. But, it would occupy us too long. Calais, with her four lights of different colors, throws out her friendly warnings and hospitable imitations even to distant Dover; and the noble gulf of the Seine, between Heve and Barfleur, lights the American seaman on his otherwise perilous passage to Havre and thence to the very home, the very heart of France.

And the good heart of France goes to her very threshold to welcome the coming and sea borne guest; lighting up, as, with an admirable skill and hospitality she does, every bold point of Brittany. At the outpost of Brest, at Saint Matthew, at Penmark, at the isle of Fen, every headland has its warning and guiding light, now flashing, now darkening, from minute to minute, or from second to second, and saying by sudden flash or momentary gloom, "Seamen! Beware! Luff it is! give that rock a wide berth! Keep off that shoal! Port! Hard aport!--Weather,--it is! Midship helm! So! Steady! Safe you are,--at your moorings!"

And observe, all these watch towers over the perilous deep, often built as they are among the breakers, and as it were in the very bosom of the tempest, solve for art the difficult problem of absolute solidity or seemingly treacherous and unsafe foundation. Many of them are quite enormously high. The architecture of the middle ages, about which so much is as boastfully as untruly said and sung, never ventured to build so high, save on condition of giving their edifices clumsy buttresses and of clamping with clumsy and costly clamps of iron, the peaked summits of their towers. A glance at the much boasted, though really anything but artistic steeple of Strasbourg, will convince you of this. Our modern builders resort to no such rude expedients. The Héaux beacon, recently erected by M. Reynaud on the dangerous shoal of the Épées de Tréguier, displays all the sublime simplicity of some gigantic ocean tree. It has no buttresses, and it needs none; its foundation is sunk boldly and bodily into the living rock; from its base of sixty feet, it rears its tall column of twenty-four feet in diameter, and each of its huge granites is, neatly as firmly, dovetailed into the other, so neatly, so closely, so firmly, that cement is a sheer superfluity; and so solidly is all built that from base to summit the tall tower is solid as, nay, we may almost venture to say, more solid than, the old rock from which science, and art, and perseverance and what the American so graphically calls _pluck_ have hewn each separate stone. Your wild wave knows not where to find a rent in the armor of this tall ocean-espying giant. She may smite, she may rage, but her blows will not harm, her rage will be spent in vain; from that rounded and great mass the giant blow glances harmlessly off; the mightiest thunder strokes of the ever enraged and ever baffled ocean have only succeeded in giving to this grand edifice a far slighter inclination than that of the purposely inclined "leaning tower" of Pisa.

Behold, then, instead of those sad bastions which, in the olden day, overlooked and threatened old ocean, like those with which Spain threatened the Moor, our modern civilization erects peaceful towers of most benevolent and beneficent hospitality; beautiful and noble monuments, often sublime as they appeal to art, always touching as they appeal to sentiment; those towers which, flashing forth their ruddy or gleaming with their silvery fires, make upon the confines of our living, swarming, and much imperilled earth, a new firmament, saving, and guiding, blessing and blessed, as the firmament above us. When no star shines upon us from that firmament above, the seaman hails this art-created light as the star of brotherhood;

"Bids its ruddy lustre hail And scorns to strike his timorous sail."

Pleasant it is to seat oneself below one of these noble beacons, those friendly fires, those true and welcoming homes of the storm tried mariner. Even the most modern of them is a venerable thing to all who, for one moment, reflect how many lives the most modern of them has already saved. With even the most modern, many a touching memory, many a wild and beautiful, and no less authentic story is connected. Two generations, merely, are enough to make your beacon already ancient, linked with old memories, consecrated, honorable, hallowed. Often, oh often does the mother say to her little ones--"Behold! That friendly beacon saved your grandfather; but for it you would never have been born."

And how often does our brave beacon receive the loving, and tender, and pure visits of the anxious wife or brother who watches for the return of the far husband or son! In the darkening evening, and even far into the dark night, the one or the other gazes anxiously up to the lofty tower, wishing, begging, imploring, for the first gleaming of the blessed and blessing light that shall guide the absent one safely back into port.

Oh! Very justly did the men of the old day, confound these honored stones with the altars of the man guiding and man saving gods; to the heart that weeps, and hopes, and prays and battles amidst the howlings of the tempest, see ye! they are still one and the same; they are still the saving guides, the very altars of the saving and the guiding Deity. For, in very truth, what are man's best works, but the realization of the Almighty will and the great directing mercy?

BOOK SECOND.

THE GENESIS OF THE SEA.