Excerpt from Western Skies: A Narrative of American Travel in 1868In the Middle Ages the Venetians claimed the sovereignty of the seas. They celebrated this triumph by an annual festival. Attended by a rejoicing populace, with music, and chimes of bells, the Dogs of Venice advanced to the brink of the sea, and in the name of the people, threwaringofgold intothe Adriatic, accompanying the action with these words.Desponaamus te, mare, in signum veri perpetuique domina (we wed thee, 0 sea, in token of our true and perpetual sovereignty.) But a greater espousal took place between the Saxon nations and the Atlantic, when the first Steamer passed from land to land, still greater when a Cable joined Old World and New.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.