Tales of the Enchanted Islands of the Atlantic
Excerpt
Hawthorne in his Wonder Book has described the beautiful
Greek
myths and traditions, but no one has yet made similar use of the
wondrous
tales that gathered for more than a thousand years about the
islands of
the Atlantic deep. Although they are a part of the mythical
period of
American history, these hazy legends were altogether disdained by
the
earlier historians; indeed, George Bancroft made it a matter of
actual
pride that the beginning of the American annals was bare and
literal. But
in truth no national history has been less prosaic as to its
earlier
traditions, because every visitor had to cross the sea to reach it,
and
the sea has always been, by the mystery of its horizon, the fury of
its
storms, and the variableness of the atmosphere above it, the
foreordained
land of romance.
