Page:Fantastics and other Fancies.djvu/245

 thither, and the incense of Oriental prayer mounts thence into the azure of a Christian heaven. Those are Chinese fishing-stations, —miniature villages of palmetto huts, whose yellow populations still cling to the creed of Fo,—unless, indeed, they follow the more practical teachings of the Ancient Infant, born with snow-white hair,—the doctrine of the good Thai-chang-lao-kinn, the sublime Loo-tseu. . ..

II Glassy-smooth the water sleeps along the northern coast of our island summer resort, as the boat slowly skirts the low beach, passing bright shallows where seines of stupendous extent are hung upon rows of high stakes to dry;—but already the ear is filled with a ponderous and powerful sound, rolling up from the south through groves of orange and lemon,—the sound of that "great voice that shakes the world." For less than half a mile away,—across the narrow island,—immense surges are whitening all the long slant of sand. . . . Divinely caressing the first far-off tones of that eternal voice to one revisiting ocean after