The Aleutian word for Great Land was Alaxsxaq, and when Europeans reached the Aleutian Islands, their first stopping point in this portion of the arc… - James A. Michener

The South Pacific is memorable because when you are in the islands you simply cannot ignore nature. You cannot avoid looking up at the stars, large as apples on a new tree. You cannot deafen your ear to the thunder of the surf. The bright sands, the screaming birds, and the wild winds are always with you.

And he showed them, riding on the Thames at the foot of the dock, a small double-ended, single-masted open shallop twenty-three feet long with eight ominous oars. “You, Edmund Steed, jump in,” Smith commanded, and a fair young man of twenty-five, dressed in the clothes of a scholar, obeyed. Soon all seven were aboard manning their oars while Captain Smith, barely five feet tall, stood approvingly on the dock, watching the little craft adjust to the weight

It was the Sea of Galilee, now known by its Latin name, Mare Tyberiadis, sunk in its deep depression among surrounding hills whose red and brown coloring played across the surface of the water, so that sometimes the lake was its own blue — a deep, pulsating blue of vivid quality which made the heart cry out with joy — while at other times it was red or brown or, where the trees were, green. But always its colors were in motion, a living, twisting kaleidoscope, as marvelous a body of water as there was on earth.