R.M.S. _Lucania_.
The Atlantic Ocean is geographically a misnomer, socially and
politically a dwindling superstition. That is the chief lesson one
learns--and one has barely time to take it in--between Queenstown and
Sandy Hook. Ocean forsooth! this little belt of blue water that we cross
before we know where we are, at a single hop-skip-and-jump! From north
to south, perhaps, it may still count as an ocean; from east to west we
have narrowed it into a strait. Why, even for the seasick (and on this
point I speak with melancholy authority) the Atlantic has not half the
terrors of the Straits of Dover; comfort at sea being a question, not of
the size of the waves, but of the proportion between the size of the
waves and the size of the ship. Our imagination is still beguiled by the
fuss the world made over Columbus, whose exploit was intellectually and
morally rather than physically great. The map-makers, too, throw dust
in our eyes by their absurd figment of two "hemispheres," as though
Nature had sliced her orange in two, and held one half in either hand.
We are slow to realise, in fact, that time is the only true measure of
space, and that London to-day is nearer to New York than it was to
Edinburgh a hundred and fifty years ago.
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