This passage is from the opening chapter of William Bartram’s The Travels of William Bartram, where he is sailing into Charleston, South Carolina, the starting point of his journey through the southeast in the 1760’s. Bartram was America’s first native-born naturalist/artist and the first author in the modern genre of writers who portrayed nature through personal experience as well as scientific observation. Bartram ended his journey in Sebastian, FL. in 1777.
“There are a few objects out at sea to attract the notice of the traveller, but what are sublime, awful, and majestic: the seas themselves, in a tempest, exhibit a tremendous scene, where winds assert their power, and in their furious conflict, seem to set the ocean on fire. On the other hand, nothing can be more sublime than the view of the encircling horizon, after the turbulent winds have taken their flight and the lately agitated bosom of the deep has again become calm and pacific; the gentle moon rising in dignity from the east, attended by millions of glittering orbs; the luminous appearance of the seas at night when all waters seem transmitted into liquid silver; the prodigious bands of porpoises foreboding tempest, that appear to cover the ocean;