Quotations in an article on the "discovery" of the Pacific by the Spaniard Balboa

"How dangerous is the acquirement of knowledge," said Victor Frankenstein, "nad how much happier that man is who believes his native town to be the world, than he who aspires to become greater than his nature will allow."
[Mary Shelly]

"Here, millions of mixed shades and shadows, drowned dreams, somnambulisms, reveries; all that we call lives and souls, lie dreaming, dreaming, still; tossing like slumberers in their beds; the ever-rolling waves but made so by their restlessness."
[Herman Melville on the Pacific Ocean]