The
waters fall from the tops of mountains where their reservatories are
placed. They gather into rivulets in the bottom of valleys. Rivers
run in winding streams through vast tracts of land, the better to
water them; and, at last, they precipitate themselves into the sea,
in order to make it the centre of commerce for all nations. That
ocean, which seems to be placed in the midst of lands, to make an
eternal separation between them, is, on the contrary, the common
rendezvous of all the people of the earth, who could not go by land
from one end of the world to the other without infinite fatigue,
tedious journeys, and numberless dangers. It is by that trackless
road, across the bottomless deep, that the whole world shakes hands
with the new; and that the new supplies the old with so many
conveniences and riches. The waters, distributed with so much art,
circulate in the earth, just as the blood does in a man's body. But
besides this perpetual circulation of the water, there is besides
the flux and reflux of the sea. Let us not inquire into the causes
of so mysterious an effect. What is certain is that the tide
carries, or brings us back to certain places, at precise hours. Who
is it that makes it withdraw, and then come back with so much
regularity? A little more or less motion in that fluid mass would
disorder all nature; for a little more motion in a tide or flood
would drown whole kingdoms. Who is it that knew how to take such
exact measures in immense bodies? Who is it that knew so well how
to keep a just medium between too much and too little? What hand
has set to the sea the unmovable boundary it must respect through
the series of all ages by telling it: There, thy proud waves shall
come and break? But these waters so fluid become, on a sudden,
during the winter, as hard as rocks.
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