The Pine-tree coast . Of all the natural marvels that assail the understanding of an inland-bredman, this ebb and flow of the tides is perhaps the greatest, the most have heard of people getting up out of their beds at two oclock in the morn-ing in order to go down to the shore and see the tide come in for the first timein their lives. In this bay the tides rise and fall some twenty-five feet. This overturningof the laws of gravity, as applied to the visible universe, gives one who isacquainted only with the unchanging level of our great inland seas and labveritable sensation: n
The Pine-tree coast . Of all the natural marvels that assail the understanding of an inland-bredman, this ebb and flow of the tides is perhaps the greatest, the most have heard of people getting up out of their beds at two oclock in the morn-ing in order to go down to the shore and see the tide come in for the first timein their lives. In this bay the tides rise and fall some twenty-five feet. This overturningof the laws of gravity, as applied to the visible universe, gives one who isacquainted only with the unchanging level of our great inland seas and labveritable sensation: nor is he. as a general thing, more than half satisfied withthe explanation of Kepler or Sir Isaac Newton touching this wonder-working. LOW-WATBB HARK. 356 THE PINE-TREE COAST. phenomenon, which has only become real to him when it has become a present,an active — why not say a living ? — fact. All the marvels of creation pale tothat mans perceptions before this clock-like movement of the great waters, —the majesty of ocean obeying the majesty of God. Apart from the influence of tidal flow upon the weather, — and great stormsat sea invariably begin on the coast with the turn of the tide, — I knowof people who believe firmly in some mysterious relation of the tides to humanlife, as, for example, that a sick man will not die till the ebb goes out. A friend of mine once overheard a Western man asking a negro sailor ifthe tides came in and went out at any particular times. The reply was unique :
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