r, but plain and ugly enough above.

"The djin did it," explained the Arab. "It is a palace of the djins,
howadji."

Though the adventurous explorer failed in his design on the defunct
Egyptian, he was rewarded by some compensating views and discoveries.
He saw there the _Xenia elongata_, a shrub-like coral distinguished
for the beauty of its colors, having stellar tentacles, rose-colored,
blue and lilac, an inch in diameter, and looking like flowers of
living jewelry; another with a long cue, like a tress of hair, and
others of allied beauty.

The coral-stone is seen and admired on centre-tables and in jewelry,
but this is really the least pleasing beauty in the organism. The
animal, subjected to exposure, is a brown mucus that dissipates in
the sun and air, but clothed in its native element this glutinous
substance is instinct with radiant life, the bodies being rose-color
and the arms a pure white. Sometimes they grow in clusters and
corymbs, gleaming with a pure, translucent color that fluctuates and
changes in the light

Like colors of a shell,
That keep the hue and polish of the wave.

Our searcher found one unexpected verification of the story in Exodus.
The passage in the Bible does not leave altogether in mystery the
natural means by which the transit was effected. We are told of the
strong east wind and the wall of waters. At the point near Suez a
shoal extends quite across the sea. For several days this wind had
borne back the shallow waters, descending as it did from the rugged
mountain-slopes, and opening or sweeping back the deep as it were.
Then the tide came, thrust forward in accumulated volume, until it
made a real wall of waters that stood up in a huge crested, angry
foam. It was sufficiently like to cause the explorer to apprehend
the possibility of finding Pharaoh by traveling the same watery road.
Another question that has puzzled scholars found a solution in the
American's observation. Smith's _Bible Dictionary_ discusses learnedly
the name of this curious gulf, written [Greek: ae eruthra thalassa]
in the Septuagint. The _Dictionary_ surmises that the name was derived
from the red western mountains, red coral zoophytes, etc., and appears
to give little weight to the real and natural reason which came under
our American's notice. On one occasion the diver observed, while
under sea, that the curious wavering shadows, which cross the lustrous
golden floor like Frauenhofer's lines