fire or flashing
steel. When the mind has conceived of that, there is to add the vivid
beauty of the living coral, its hue of molten colored glass spreading
a radiant mucus over the stony skeleton.

But he has not yet entered into an entire conception of its
loveliness. The arborescent and phaenogamous forms of the coral are to
be noticed. Here is a plant: it has a pale, gray-blue stalk, and all
over it are delicate green leaves, fronds or tentacles, as you please
to call them. There is a fan-shaped shrub whose starry fronds recall
the _Chaemerops serrulata_ of the adjacent shore. The ament, so to
speak, of the _Parasmilia centralis_, the catkin of the sea, recalls
its terrene counterpart. There are other flowers in fascicles and
corymbs. The rose is not lacking, but glows with the radiant beauty of
its petaliferous sister; the columnar trunks of stony trees, covered
with green, flossy mosses, are scattered about; and fresh fountains
gush from the rocks, the white water as clearly distinguishable from
the ultramarine as in the upper atmosphere.[1]

But some varieties of beauty in the coral belong to calmer seas: among
others, the Red Sea is noticed for the exquisite loveliness of its
coralline formations. An American explorer, well known in submarine
diving, once visited that gulf sacred in history, and for a purpose
certainly as singular as anything he found there. It was, to use his
own words, "to fish for Pharaoh's golden chariot-wheels," lost in that
famous pursuit. Is it possible, in the nature of things, for such an
expedition to be made by any but an American? It takes a strong Bible
faith, allied to a simple but strong self-confidence, to start a man
on such an adventure. The curious transforming magic of the sea had
its effect on the Arab dragoman he had engaged to assist him. Having
settled on the exact spot, the swart Arabian descended, but signaled
to return almost immediately, and was brought to the surface in
open-eyed wonder. With all the hyperbole of Oriental imagination he
swore positively to the finding of the chariot-wheels, and added the
jewelry of Pharaoh's household. He was so earnest and so exact in the
matter of the golden wheel, set with precious stones, that, though the
captain dryly asked if he did not meet King Pharaoh himself, taking a
moist throne and keeping court with the fishes, he none the less
had the line attached and drew up--the rude wheel of a Tartar wagon,
transformed under wate