There are not many things in the material world more sublime than a
thousand miles of crested waves rushing with terrible might against the
rocky shore. While they are yet some distance from the land a small
boat can ride their foaming billows, but as they approach the shallower
places they seem to take on sudden rage and irresistible force. Those
roaring waves rear up two or three times as high. They have great
perpendicular fronts down which Niagaras are pouring. The spray flies
from their tops like the mane of a thousand wild horses charging in the
wind. No ship can hold anchor in the breakers. They may dare a
thousand storms outside, but once let them fall into the clutch of this
resistless power and they are doomed. The waves seem frantic with
rage, resistless in force; they rush with fury, smite the cliffs with
thunder, and are flung fifty feet into the air; with what effect on the
rocks we will try to relate.
[Illustration: "The Breakers," Santa Cruz, Cal.]
No. 1 of our illustrations shows "The Breakers," a two-story house of
that name where hospitality, grace, and beauty abide; where hundreds of
roses bloom in a day, and where flowers, prodigal as creative
processes, abound. The breakers from which the house is named are not
seen in the picture. When the wind has been blowing hard, maybe one
hundred miles out at sea, they come racing in from the point,
feather-crested, a dozen at once, to show how rolls the far Wairoa at
some other world's end.
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