In the Utopia all is dull and gray, only children are pleased
with jewels, only prisoners are loaded with golden chains. In
the New Atlantis jewels and gold gleam and flash, the love of
splendor and color shows itself almost in every page.
Bacon wastes no time in explanation but launches right into the
middle of his story. "We sailed from Peru," he says, "(where we
had continued by the space of one whole year) for China and
Japan, by the South Sea, taking with us victuals for twelve
months." And through all the story we are not told who the "we"
were or what their names or business. There were, we learn,
fifty-one persons in all on board the ship. After some month's
good sailing they met with storms of wind. They were driven
about now here, now there. Their food began to fail, and finding
themselves in the midst of the greatest wilderness of waters in
the world, they gave themselves us as lost. But presently one
evening they saw upon one hand what seemed like darker clouds,
but which in the end proved to be land.
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