The Otago Witness, WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE SOUTHERN MERCURY. (WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 12, 1910.) THE WEEK.

Otago Witness, Issue 2913, 12 January 1910, Page 55

The Otago Witness, WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE SOUTHERN MERCURY. (WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 12, 1910.) THE WEEK.

" Nunqiwm aliud natura, aliud sapientia dixit."— JtJVBKAL. " Good nature and good sense must ever join."— Pope. What nearly proved a terrible tragedy . happily resulted in -nothing The Wreck of more than an unexpected the Walkare. and hastily improvised pidnic. The story of the wreck of the Waikare is in this issue of the Witness so fully and completely told by aid of pen and protograph that it is unnecessary to rehearse it even in outline. A purely pleasure excursion partially spoiled by inclement weather came to an untimely end owing to the unsuspected presence of an uncharted rock in Dusky Sound. John Gay, in one of his

well-known ballads of trie sea, causes th sailor to exclaim :

How can they say that Nature Has no thing made in vain? Why then beneath the water Should hideous '-ocks remain? ]Sio eyes these rocks discover, That Inrk bcijeatli the deep, To wvecic the wandering lover. And leave the maid to weep.

Thanks to an exhibition of superb sear manship nnd magnificent courage and presence of mind on the part of captain, mates, engineer.";, crew, and passengers, neither wandering lover nor waiting maid has had any cause to sorrow 01 to weep. And as to the poet's query in regard to the reason for the existence of. submerged and sharp-pointed rocks —the dread and menace of every mariner— Victor Hugo furnishes a complete answer in that marvellous romance " The Toilers of the Sea " when he describes the Great Douvre rock, upon which the Durande had been wrecked : "A rock near tha coast is sometimes visited by men; a rock in .mid ocean never. What object could anyone have there ? No supplies , could be drawn thence; no fruit trees are there, no pasturage, no beasts, ntf springs of water fitted lor man's use. It stands aloft, a rock with its steep sides' and summits above water, and its sharp points below. Nothing is to be found there but inevitable shipwreck. This, kind of rocks, which in the old sea dialect were called Isoles, are, as we hava. said, strange places. The sea is alone there; she works her own will. No token of terrestrial life disturbs her. Man is a terror to the sea; she is shy of his approach, and hides from him her deeds. But she is bolder among the lone searocks. The. everlasting soliloquy of the waves is not troubled there. She labours at the rocks, repairs its damage, sharpens its peaks, makes them rugged or renews them. She pierces the granite, wears down the soft stone, and denudes the hard; she rummages, dismembers, bores, perforates, and grooves; she fills the rock with cells, and makes it sponge-like, hollows out the inside, or sculptures it' without. In that secret mountain, which is hers, she makes to herself caves, sanctuaries, palaces. She has her splendid and monstrous vegetation, comoosed l of floating plants which bite, and of monsters which take root; and she hides away all this magnificence in the twilight of the deeo. Among, the isolated rocks no eye watches over her; no one embarrasses her movements. It is there that she develops at liberty her mysterious side, which is inaccessible to man. Here she keeps all strange secretions of life. Here that the unknown wonders of the sea are assembled."

It may be expected that one outcome

The Perils of the Deoi>.

of the wreck of the Wai< kare will be to nendag cautions , people mors cautious in regard to ocean

excursions. There will be multitudes ready to echo Herrick’s warning, entitled “ Safety on the Shore,” that well known couplet, which runs :

What though the sea be calm.? Trust to the shore; Ships have been clrown'cl where late they * danc'd before. Indeed, the following description, also from Victor Hugo, might almost have been written of the scene as it presented itself the morning after the wreck of Ihe Waikare :—" Inanimate things look sometimes as if endowed with a dark and hostile spirit towards man. There was a menace in. the attitude of the rocks. They seemed to be biding their time. Nothing: could be more suggestive of haughtiness and arrogance than their whole appearance, the conquered vessel, the. triumphant abyss. . . . Ordinar : ly the sea conceals her crimes. She delights in privacy. Her unfathomable deep keppa silence. She wraps herself in a mystery which rarely consents to give up its secrets. We know her savage nature, but w r ho can tell the extent of her dark deed:?.? She is at once open and secret; sha hides away very carefully, and cares not to divulge her actions ; wrecks a vessel and.' covering it with the- waves, enguifs it deep, as if conscious of her guilt. Among her crimes is hypocrisy. She slayt and steals, conceals her booty, puts o* an air of unconsciousness and smiles.'> This eloquent passage at once brings t< mind the contrast between the cases o( the Waikare and the Waratah. Th« Waikare disaster occurred in broad daylight ; there was no loss of life, and th< boat, though shattered and broken, lies suspended between sky and sea. half submerged in the ocean deep. But the fata of the Waratah is still shrouded in mystery, although that hope which srjrinos eternal in the human breast still impels farther search for the hapless vessel and the still more hapless human beings who have vanished with her. Either sad circumstance makes appropriate a quotation from Canon Sheehan's "Paregra" the passage wherein he meditates on tha perils of the deep and the poweiieseness. of man to avert them. His subject is a, sea fog, which suddenly came down, and' for "three days and three nights blotted out the heavens and the earth. It was so thick that the powerful light across the little straight was absolutely extinguished except for its lonely watchers on. the island; but all day long, and all night, came every minute the deep mournful voice of the fogbell, muffled and sad,"with a strange funeral tone, that eeemed to tell of wreck and. sea ruins. .-' . And I could hear, ever and anon, the foghorn of some vessel, " deeply embedded in the thick folds of the mist, and the answering* alarm from some spirit ship farther out' at sea. And sometimes quick spasms of sound would break in succession quite' close to the shore—inarticulate warnings of great peril,—until, like the gasps of an exhausted and terror-stricken creature,' the voices would come repeated from farther and farther as the trawls .