the coral reefs,
revealed through the magic mirror of the watery depths. As we gaze
steadily through the silvery blue of the glassy sea, a misty vision of
vague outline and shifting colour materialises into an enchanted
forest, and appears rising towards the surface. Coral trees, pink and
white, gold and green, orange and red, wave interlacing branches of
lace-like texture and varying form, above the blue water-ways which
divide the tremulous masses of rainbow-tinted foliage. The sinuous
channels expand at intervals into quiet pools, bordered with azure and
purple sea-stars, or studded with clumps of yellow lilies, spotted and
striped with carmine. A circle of rock, enclosing a miniature lake,
blazes with rose and scarlet anemones, and the boat, floating over the
wilderness of marine vegetation, pauses above a coral growth, varied in
form as any tropical woodland. Majestic trees, of amber and emerald
hue, stand with roots muffled in fading fern, or sunk in perforated
carpets of white sponge, and huge vegetable growths or giant weeds,
lustrous with metallic tints of green and violet, fill clefts and
ravines of coral rock. A grove of sea-palms mimics the features of the
upper world, as though Nature obeyed some mysterious law of form, lying
behind her operations, to regulate expression and bring order out of
chaos. Giant bunches of black and mauve grapes, like the pictured
spoils of the Promised Land, lie on soft beds of feathery moss, but the
familiar greens of the velvety carpet shade into orange and pink. A
weird marine plant shoves long black stems, crowned with a circle of
azure blue eyes, which convey an uncanny sensation of being regarded
with sleepless vigilance by mysterious sentinels, transformed and
spellbound in ocean depths. Tree-fern and hart's-tongue show verdant
fronds, flushed with autumnal red or gold, and a dense growth of starry
flowers suggests a bed of many-coloured tulips. Dazzling fish dart
through the crystal depths. A shoal of scarlet and green parrot-fish
pursue a tribe striped with blue and orange. Gold-fish flash like
meteors between uplifted spears of blood-red coral, and the glittering
scales of myriads, splashed with ruby, or flecked with amethyst,
reflect the colours of the gorgeously-frilled and rosetted anemones in
parterres between red coral crags. Tresses of filmy green floating from
the mouth of a cavern, suggest a mermaid's hair, and her visible
presence would scarcely add to the won