Chateaubriand on the pelagian

 “Between the sea and the land is a stretch of pelagian country . . . 

... where the frontiers of the two elements become indistinct. Skylarks from the fields fly with sealarks. The plow and the fishing boat, a stone’s throw apart, furrow the land and the water alike. The sailor and the shepherd borrow from one another’s tongues: the sailor says ‘the waves are flocking,’ and the shepherd speaks of ‘fleets of sheep.’ The multicolored sands, the variegated heaps of shells, the kelp, and the silvery fringe of foam rise up to the blond or green edges of the wheatfields. I forget now on which Mediterranean island I saw a bas-relief depicting the Nereids pinning scallops to the hem of Ceres’s robe.”  

(from Memoirs from Beyond the Grave, the autobiography of François-René de Chateaubriand, 1848)