272 I N A G U A 



Nowhere in the world of upper air is there such a con- 

 ception of color or color values. Sunsets and the brilliant 

 foliage of autumn are lovely, but in contrast they are garish 

 and crude. There is something indescribably soft and un- 

 touchable about these coral reef hues, a shimmering pearly 

 quality which is so evanescent and intangible that it baffles 

 accurate description. A few feet away a school of mackerel 

 of some unidentifiable species was pouring from between two 

 great stone trees. When they came from the shadow they 

 were faint lustrous pink tinged with a suggestion of silver 

 and lavender, but when they emerged into the full rays of 

 a stream of sunlight they suddenly but softly altered to bril- 

 liant yellow that flared and dimmed from flaming gold to 

 reddish copper as the sun caught their scales at full right 

 angles or obliquely. 



Perhaps the most entrancing effect of the entire scene was 

 the utter lightness of everything. Even the great stone trees, 

 ponderous though they must have been, had an air of delicacy. 

 Their branches extended out and out in lacy filagree becom- 

 ing, queerly enough, more fragile as they went towards the 

 direction of greatest force, the point where the surf was 

 breaking. Land trees of equal delicacy and weight in similar 

 position would not have lasted ten minutes. The bottom was 

 strewn with hundreds of purple and yellow sea fans, and with 

 the long feathery plumes of gorgonians and sea pens which 

 gracefully swayed back and forth, not rapidly, but ever so 

 gently in the most artistic undulations. I noticed that every 

 sea fan was placed in precisely the same position, exactly 

 parallel to the coast. Like the reef, like the beach and the 

 sand dunes back of the palms on the shore they had oriented 

 themselves at right angles to the wind and waves. Between 

 the fans were other hundreds of purple sea-plumes which 

 looked like feathers torn from some gigantic bird and planted 



