52

Nor pilot knows if bounding shores are placed,
Or if one dreary fea o'erflow the lonely wafte.

While thus our keels still onward boldly stray'd,
Now tofts by tempefts, now by calms delay'd,
To tell the terrors of the deep untry'd,
What toils we fuffer'd, and what storms defy'd;
What rattling deluges the black clouds pour'd,
What dreary weeks of folid darkness lour'd;
What mountain furges mountain furges lash'd,
What fudden hurricanes the canvafs dafh'd;
What bursting lightnings, with inceffant flare,
Kindled in one wide flame the burning air;
What roaring thunders bellow'd o'er our head,
And seem'd to shake the reeling ocean's bed:
To tell each horror in the deep reveal'd,

Would ask an iron throat with tenfold vigour steel'd:
Thofe dreadful wonders of the deep faw,
Which fill the failor's breaft with facred awe;
And which the fages, of their learning vain,

Efteem the phantoms of the dreamful brain.
That living fire, by fea-men held divine,
Of heaven's own care in storms the holy fign,

Which

• That living fire, by fea-men held divine.The ancients thus accounted for this appearance: The fulphureous vapours of the air, after being violently agitated by a tempest, unite, and when the humidity begins to fubfide, as is the cafe when the ftorm is almost exhausted, by the agitation of their atoms they take fire, and are attracted by the mafts and cordage of the ship.

Which midst the horrors of the tempeft plays,
And on the blaft's dark wings will gaily blaze;
These eyes diftinct have seen that living fire
Glide through the ftorm, and round my fails afpire.
And oft, while wonder thrill'd my breaft, mine
To heaven have seen the watery columns rise.
Slender at first the fubtle fume appears,
And writhing round and round its volume rears:
Thick as a maft the vapour fwells its fize;

A curling whirlwind lifts it to the skies:

The tube now ftraitens, now in width extends,

And in a hovering cloud its fummit ends:

Still gulp on gulp in fucks the rising tide,

eyes

And now the cloud, with cumbrous weight fupply'd,

53

Full

Being thus naturally the pledges of the approaching calm, it is no wonder that the superstition of sailors should in all ages have esteemed them divine,

and

Of Heaven's own care in ftorms the boly fign.

In the expedition of the Golden Fleece, in a violent tempeft these fires were feen to hover over the heads of Caftor and Pollux, who were two of the Argonauts, and a calm immediately enfued. After the apotheoses of thefe heroes, the Grecian failors invoked those fires by the names of Caftor and Pollux, or the fons of Jupiter. The Athenians called them Ergeç, Saviours, and Homer, in his hymn to Caftor and Pollux, fays,

Ναύταις σήματα καλὰ πότε σφίσιν, οι δὲ ἰδόντες
Γήθησαν, πάυσαντο δ ̓ ἔϊζυροῖο πόνοιο.

Plin. Nat. Hift. 1. 2. Seneca, Queft. Nat. c. i. and Cæfar de Bell. Afr. c. vi. mention these fires as often seen to alight and rest on the points of the fpears of the foldiers. By the French and Spaniards they are called St. Helme's fires; and by the Italians, the fires of St. Peter and St. Nicholas. Modern discoveries have proved that these appearances are the electric fluid attracted by the spindle of the mast, or the point of the fpear.

Full-gorged, and blackening, spreads, and moves, more flow,

And waving trembles to the waves below.

Thus when to fhun the fummer's fultry beam
The thirsty heifer feeks the cooling stream,
The eager horfe-leech fixing on her lips,
Her blood with ardent throat infatiate fips,
Till the gorged glutton, swell'd beyond her fize,
Drops from her wounded hold, and bursting dies.
So burfts the cloud, o'erloaded with its freight,
And the dafh'd ocean ftaggers with the weight.
But fay, P ye fages, who can weigh the caufe,
And trace the fecret springs of Nature's laws,

Say,

But fay, ye fages.- In this book, particularly in the defcription of Maffilia, the Gorgades, the fires called Caftor and Pollux, and the waterfpout, Camoëns has happily imitated the manner of Lucan. It is probable that Camoëns, in his voyage to the Eaft-Indies, was an eye-witness of the phænomena of the fires and water-fpout. The latter is thus described by Pliny, 1. 2. c. 51. Fit et caligo, belluæ fimilis nubes dira navigantibus vocatur et columna, cum fpiffatus humor rigenfque ipfe fe fuftinet, et in longum veluti fiftulam nubes aquam trahit. Dr. Priestley, from Signior Beccaria, thus describes the water-fpouts: "They generally appear in calm weather. The sea seems to boil, and fend up a fmcke under them, rising in a hill towards the spout. A rumbling noife is heard. The form is that of a speaking trumpet, the wider end being towards the clouds, and the narrower towards the fea. The colour is fometimes whitish, and at other times black. Their pofition is sometimes perpendicular, fometimes oblique, and fometimes in the form of a curve. Their continuance is yarious; fome vanish instantly and presently rife again; and fome continue near an hour." Modern philofophers afcribe them to electricity, and efteem them of the fame nature as whirlwinds and hurricanes on land. Camoëns fays, the water of which they are compofed, becomes freshened; which fome have thus accounted for: when the violent heat attracts the waters to rife in the form of a tube, the marine falts are left behind by the action of rarefaction, being too groís and fixed to afcend. It is thus, when the overloaded vapour burfts, that it defcends

Sweet as the waters of the limpid rill.

Say, why the wave, of bitter brine erewhile,
Should to the bofom of the deep recoil
Robb'd of its falt, and from the cloud diftil
Sweet as the waters of the limpid rill?
Ye fons of boastful wisdom, famed of yore,
Whose feet unwearied wander'd many a fhore,
From Nature's wonders to withdraw the veil,
Had you with me unfurl'd the daring fail,
Had view'd the wondrous fcenes mine eyes furvey'd,
What seeming miracles the deep display'd,

What fecret virtues various Nature fhew'd,
Oh! heaven! with what a fire your page

had glow'd!

And now fince wandering o'er the foamy spray,
Our brave Armada held her venturous way,
Five times the changeful emprefs of the night
Had fill'd her fhining horns with filver light,
When fudden from the main-top's airy round
Land! land! is echoed-At the joyful found,
Swift to the crowded decks the bounding crew
On wings of hope and fluttering transport flew,
And each strain'd eye with aching fight explores
The wide horizon of the eastern fhores :

As thin blue clouds the mountain summits rise,
And now the lawns falute our joyful eyes;
Loud through the fleet the echoing shouts prevail,
We drop the anchor, and restrain the fail;
And now descending in a spacious bay,

Wide o'er the coaft the venturous foldiers ftray,

1

To spy the wonders of the favage shore,

Where stranger's foot had never trod before.
I, and my pilots, on the yellow fand

Explore beneath what sky the shores expand.
That fage device, whofe wondrous ufe proclaims
Th' immortal honour of its authors' 4 names,

The fun's height measured, and my compass scann'd
The painted globe of ocean and of land.

Here we perceived our venturous keels had past,
Unharm'd, the southern tropic's howling blast;
And now approach'd dread Neptune's secret reign,
Where the ftern power, as o'er the Austral main
He rides, wide scatters from the polar ftar
Hail, ice, and snow, and all the wintery war.
While thus attentive on the beach we ftood,
My foldiers, haftening from the upland wood,
Right to the shore a trembling negro brought,
Whom on the foreft-height by force they caught,
As diftant wander'd from the cell of home,
He fuck'd the honey from the porous comb.
Horror glar'd in his look, and fear extreme
In mien more wild than brutal Polypheme:
No word of rich Arabia's tongue he knew,
No fign could answer, nor our gems would view :

From

That fage device. -The aftrolabium, an inftrument of infinite service in navigation, by which the altitude of the fun and distance of the stars are taken. It was invented in Portugal during the reign of John II. by two Jew phyficians, named Roderic and Jofeph. It is afferted by fome that they were affifted by Martin of Bohemia, a celebrated mathematician. Partly from Caftera. Vid. Barros, Dec. 1. 1. 4. c. 2.