And what
they have done, all the world knows. To seamen, and to men connected
with the sea, what do we not owe, in geography, hydrography,
meteorology, astronomy, natural history? At the present moment, the
world owes them large improvements in dynamics, and in the new uses
of steam and iron. It may be fairly said that the mariner has done
more toward the knowledge of Nature than any other personage in the
world, save the physician.
For seamen have been forced, by the nature of their calling, to be
scientific men. From the very earliest ages in which the first canoe
put out to sea, the mariner has been educated by the most practical
of all schoolmasters, namely, danger. He has carried his life in his
hand day and night; he has had to battle with the most formidable and
the most seemingly capricious of the brute powers of nature; with
storms, with ice, with currents, with unknown rocks and shoals, with
the vicissitudes of climate, and the terrible and seemingly
miraculous diseases which change of climate engenders. He has had to
fight Nature; and to conquer her, if he could, by understanding her;
by observing facts, and by facing facts. He dared not, like a
scholar in his study, indulge in theories and fancies about how
things ought to be. He had to find out how they really were.
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