like Europe or England or Liverpool in the great wide world. It seemed
too strange, and wonderful, and altogether incredible, that there could
really be cities and towns and villages and green fields and hedges and
farm-yards and orchards, away over that wide blank of sea, and away
beyond the place where the sky came down to the water. And to think of
steering right out among those waves, and leaving the bright land
behind, and the dark night coming on, too, seemed wild and foolhardy;
and I looked with a sort of fear at the sailors standing by me, who
could be so thoughtless at such a time. But then I remembered, how many
times my own father had said he had crossed the ocean; and I had never
dreamed of such a thing as doubting him; for I always thought him a
marvelous being, infinitely purer and greater than I was, who could not
by any possibility do wrong, or say an untruth. Yet now, how could I
credit it, that he, my own father, whom I so well remembered; had ever
sailed out of these Narrows, and sailed right through the sky and water
line, and gone to England, and France, Liverpool, and Marseilles. It was
too wonderful to believe.

Now, on the right hand side of the Narrows as you go out, the land is
quite high; and on the top of a fine cliff is a great castle or fort,
all in ruins, and with the trees growing round it. It was built by
Governor Tompkins in the time of the last war with England, but was
never used, I believe, and so they left it to decay. I had visited the
place once when we lived in New York, as long ago almost as I could
remember, with my father, and an uncle of mine, an old sea-captain, with
white hair, who used to sail to a place called Archangel in Russia, and
who used to tell me that he was with Captain Langsdorff, when Captain
Langsdorff crossed over by land from the sea of Okotsk in Asia to St.
Petersburgh, drawn by large dogs in a sled. I mention this of my uncle,
because he was the very first sea-captain I had ever seen, and his white