Letter from William Henry Seward to Frances Miller Seward, August 22, 1857
xml:
Letter from William Henry Seward to Frances Miller Seward, August 22, 1857
transcriber
Transcriber:spp:les
student editorTranscriber:spp:rmg
Distributor:Seward Family Digital Archive
Institution:University of Rochester
Repository:Rare Books and Special Collections
Date:1857-08-22
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Letter from William Henry Seward to Frances Miller Seward, August 22, 1857
action: sent
sender: William Seward
Birth: 1801-05-16
Death: 1872-10-10
location: Quebec, Canada
receiver: Frances Seward
Birth: 1805-09-24
Death: 1865-06-21
location: Gloucester, MA
transcription: les
revision: amr 2033-01-31
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The letter was sent ahead via another ship, who sent it “from Quebec”. It was originally enclosed in a letter from William Henry Seward to Frances Adeline Miller Seward, written on August 21, 1857.
Saturday August 22
nd
1857 10 AM
No one is more truly a waiter on Providence than the traveler who depends on sails
to be filled by favoring breezes. Ten watches of the day and night have passed since
we left Anticosti and yet we are only seventy miles nearer our port. But we
have had balmy summer skies and ^a^ gently lulling summer sea. Not a craft of any
size or kind has darkened our horizon. It is to us as if the human world
beyond it was not. The sea birds have circled our masts crying for crumbs from
our table as it has been bountifully spread a half dozen times on deck
either in the sunshine or in the shade of the canvass. The whale has blown
his loudest note on his bugle in distances so remote that the eye
could not detect him though so well directed by the ear, and again he
has rolled lazily by the vessels side exposing his vast proportions as if
this most just log of ours was not already filled with ^oily^ narrations
of the hydratante exhibitions of his race. Then the nights, There has
been no moon. But the stars they have spangled the sky from the zenith quite
down to the very waters edge, hundreds of ambitious light houses offering their
services officiously to mariners who lay becalmed and therefore, could not
lose their way. And the aurora, emulous, has made a dozen milky
ways, in all fantastic forms and gilded their verges with pink and
gold borrowed from the richest sunsets. The sea itself has been luminous
as its surface was broken by the prow and rolled off waves of phosphorescent
light so brilliant as to discover the doings of the inhabitants who dwell
in its dark—chambers. And now all this is passed. The east wind we
have impatiently sighed for has come at last and it has brought as usual
in its train fogs, clouds, and cold rains. But these are attended by their
compensations. The Seven Islands are passing behind us and we are trying not
without hope, to reach the Point de Monts and leaving the gulf to enter the
narrow channel of the River, before the third sabbath of our voyage dawns
upon us.
Dreamy existence, is this living at sea, in the summer. Perhaps my
meditations on the political destinies of the region around me may be as e
Ends mid-sentence; a page or more is missing.
e
Editorial Note
No one is more truly a waiter on Providence than the traveler who depends on sails
to be filled by favoring breezes. Ten watches of the day and night have passed since
we left Anticosti and yet we are only seventy miles nearer our port. But we
have had balmy summer skies and ^a^ gently lulling summer sea. Not a craft of any
size or kind has darkened our horizon. It is to us as if the human world
beyond it was not. The sea birds have circled our masts crying for crumbs from
our table as it has been bountifully spread a half dozen times on deck
either in the sunshine or in the shade of the canvass. The whale has blown
his loudest note on his bugle in distances so remote that the eye
could not detect him though so well directed by the ear, and again he
has rolled lazily by the vessels side exposing his vast proportions as if
this most just log of ours was not already filled with ^oily^ narrations
of the hydratante exhibitions of his race. Then the nights, There has
been no moon. But the stars they have spangled the sky from the zenith quite
down to the very waters edge, hundreds of ambitious light houses offering their
services officiously to mariners who lay becalmed and therefore, could not
lose their way. And the aurora, emulous, has made a dozen milky
ways, in all fantastic forms and gilded their verges with pink and
gold borrowed from the richest sunsets. The sea itself has been luminous
as its surface was broken by the prow and rolled off waves of phosphorescent
light so brilliant as to discover the doings of the inhabitants who dwell
in its dark—chambers. And now all this is passed. The east wind we
have impatiently sighed for has come at last and it has brought as usual
in its train fogs, clouds, and cold rains. But these are attended by their
compensations. The Seven Islands are passing behind us and we are trying not
without hope, to reach the Point de Monts and leaving the gulf to enter the
narrow channel of the River, before the third sabbath of our voyage dawns
upon us.
Dreamy existence, is this living at sea, in the summer. Perhaps my
meditations on the political destinies of the region around me may be as e