chman.

But to combine and fuse all these elements was the work of England. To
that nation, with its noble inheritance of a composite language,
incomparably rich in all the nomenclature of natural objects and
sounds, was given especially the coast department, so to speak, of
language. Every variety of shore, from shingly beaches to craggy
headlands, was theirs. While the grand outlines and larger features are
Italian, such as Cape, Island, Gulf, the minuter belong to the Northern
races, who are closer observers of Nature's nice differences, and who
take more delight in a frank, fearless acquaintance and fellowship with
out-door objects. Beach, sand, headland, foreland, shelf, reef,
breaker, bar, bank, ledge, shoal, spit, sound, race, reach, are words
of Northern origin. So, too, the host of local names by which every
peculiar feature of shore-scenery is individualized,--as, for instance,
the Needles, the Eddystone, the Three Chimneys, the Hen and Chickens,
the Bishop and Clerks. The strange atmospheric phenomena, especially of
the tropics, have been christened by the Spaniard and Portuguese, the
Corposant, the Pampero, the Tornado, the Hurricane. Then follows a host
of words of which the derivation is doubtful,--such as sea, mist, foam,
scud, rack. Their monosyllabic character may only be the result of that
clipping and trimming which words get on shipboard. Your seaman's
tongue is a true bed of Procrustes for the unhappy words that roll over
it. They are docked without mercy, or, now and then, when not properly
mouth-filling, they are "spliced" with a couple of vowels. It is
impossible to tell the whys and wherefores of sea-prejudices.

We have now indicated the main sources of the ocean-language. As new
nations are received into the nautical brotherhood, and as new
improvements are made, new terms come in. The whole whaling diction is
the contribution of America, or rather of Nantucket, New Bedford, and
New London, aided by the islands of the Pacific and the mongrel Spanish
ports of the South Seas. Here and there an adventurous genius coins a
phrase for the benefit of posterity,--as we once heard a mate order a
couple of men to "go forrard and trim the ship's whiskers," to the
utter bewilderment of his captain, who, in thirty years' following of
the sea, had never heard the martingale chains and stays so designated.
But the source of the great body of the sea-language might be marked
out on the map by a current flowi