NO-MAN'S-LAND FIVE FATHOMS DOWN 



orange. Yet I am always pleased when I detect 

 salmon, or pearl-grey or ultramarine. How I wish 

 that the inventors of the names of colors had been 

 imbued with the simplicity and the imagination of 

 those who, through all the years, have acted as 

 little Adams to the flowers. 



Some day, when I can carry a color book in my 

 helmet, I will be able to enumerate an exact color 

 code of distance. Even in our colder, thinner 

 atmosphere the green of mountain slopes softens 

 to purple a long way off, but on the bottom of the 

 sea, still greater changes take place within a few 

 feet or yards. I have walked backward and seen 

 a feathery-crowned sea-worm of dragon's blood 

 alter, in my vision, within a few seconds and steps, 

 to the palest of coral pink; while a sea-weed, 

 deep olive-green when within reach, comes gently 

 to the eye, when five yards away, as faintest 

 glaucous. 



An artist of great skill and patience can approxi- 

 mate the oxydized royal purple of a gorgonia, even 

 the pink and ivory sunset of a conch shell, — ^but 

 the vanishing point of distance beneath the water, 

 where the coral reef ends and the mysteries of the 

 unknown deeps begin — the illusion, too subtle for 

 color, of submarine visual infinity — -this is not to be 

 whelmed by man-made brushes nor imprisoned 

 on any terrestrial dimension. 



It is the custom nowadays to "do" a city in a 

 day, or a cathedral in an hour, or even to produce 

 a volume of solemn critical comment after the 



39 



