What a joyful thing it is to awaken, on a fresh glorious morning, and
find the rising sun staring into your face with dazzling brilliancy! to
see the birds twittering in the bushes, and to hear the murmuring of a
rill, or the soft hissing ripples as they fall upon the seashore! At
any time and in any place such sights and sounds are most charming, but
more especially are they so when one awakens to them, for the first
time, in a novel and romantic situation, with the soft sweet air of a
tropical climate mingling with the fresh smell of the sea, and stirring
the strange leaves that flutter overhead and around one, or ruffling
the plumage of the stranger birds that fly inquiringly around, as if to
demand what business we have to intrude uninvited on their domains.
When I awoke on the morning after the shipwreck, I found myself in this
most delightful condition; and as I lay on my back upon my bed of
leaves, gazing up through the branches of the cocoa-nut trees into the
clear blue sky, and watched the few fleecy clouds that passed slowly
across it, my heart expanded more and more with an exulting gladness,
the like of which I had never felt before. While I meditated, my
thoughts again turned to the great and kind Creator of this beautiful
world, as they had done on the previous day, when I first beheld the
sea and the coral reef, with the mighty waves dashing over it into the
calm waters of the lagoon.
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