which transmogrifies
everything--touches the coarsest objects with its pencil, and they
become radiant and spiritual. A pile of brick, dumped carelessly
on the deck, has become a huge hill of crystal jewelry, lively with
brilliant prismatic radiance. Where the light falls on the steps of
the staircase it shows a ladder of silver crusted with emeralds. The
round-house, spars, masts, every spot where a peak or angle catches
the light, have flushed into liquid, jeweled beauty; and each point, a
prism and mirror, catches, multiplies and reflects the other splendor.
A rainbow, a fleecy mist over the lake, made prismal by the sunlight,
a bunch of sub-aqueous moss, a soap-bubble, are all examples in our
daily experience of that transforming power of water in the display of
color. The prevailing tone is that soft, golden effulgence which,
like the grace of a cheerful and loving heart, blends all into one
harmonious whole.

But observation warns the spectator of the delusive character of all
that splendor of color. He lifts a box from the ooze: he appears
to have uncorked the world. The hold is a bottomless chasm. Every
indentation, every acclivity that casts a shadow, gives the impression
of that soundless depth. The bottom of the sea seems loopholed with
cavities that pierce the solid globe and the dark abysses of space
beyond. The diver is surrounded by pitfalls, real and imaginary. There
is no graduation. The shallow concave of a hand-basin is as the shadow
of the bottomless well.

If the exploration takes place in the delta of a great river, the
light is affected by the various densities of the double refracting
media. At the proper depth one can see clearly the line where these
two meet, clean cut and as sharply defined as the bottom of a green
glass tumbler through the pure water it contains. The salt brine or
gelatinous sea-water sinks weighted to the bottom, and over it flows
the fresh river-water. If the latter is darkened with sediment, it
obscures the silent depths with a heavy, gloomy cloud. In seasons of
freshet this becomes a total darkness.

But even on a bright, sunshiny day, under clear water, the shadow of
any object in the sea is unlike any shade in the upper atmosphere. It
draws a black curtain over everything under it, completely obscuring
it. Nor is this peculiarity lost when the explorer enters the shadow;
but, as one looking into a tunnel from without can see nothing
therein, though the open country