Fishes on the Mountains of the Sea 47 



is the highway of countless fishes — vast schools of barra- 

 cuda, yellowtail, smelt, and sardines skirt its borders; the 

 giant black sea bass makes its home here, and so clear are 

 the waters that you may look down into them, and fifty feet 

 below see the big bass floating in the nooks and corners of 

 its choice — a veritable colossus of the fishes. 



The beauties of this region, on the slope of the precipitous 

 mountain of San Clemente or Santa Catalina, or the rocky 

 mountain of Santa Barbara Rock, twenty-five miles to the 

 north, can hardly be described. 



The latter is a small rock, several acres in extent, which, 

 if not surrounded by water, would appear an extraordinary 

 pinnacle rising from the abysmal regions of the sea, as not 

 very far away the *' Albatross " found bottom almost a mile 

 below the surface. The slopes of this needle of the sea are 

 invested with graceful forests of nereocystis. The long 

 olive-hued leaves rise upward in water as blue as sapphire, 

 so that the graceful outline of the leaf stands out in sharp 

 relief, and here, and along all the adjacent shores, one finds 

 opportunity to form acquaintance with the dwellers on the 

 slopes of the mountains of the sea. 



With the big sea-bass are flashes of deep yellow, telling 

 of the Garibaldi, calling to mind the angel fish of the 

 tropics, of other kinship. Graceful of shape, debonair, 

 a " sea orange," poising among the leaves, now in sharp 

 relief against the turquoise depths of the sea the Garibaldi 

 is to the manner born, and even in its growth and develop- 

 ment is a living color scheme, as the very young are living 

 sapphires, gleaming with seeming iridescent tints of tur- 

 quoise and sapphire. 



As they grow, they take on yellow tints, which gradually 

 spread and envelop the fish, until in adult life the Garibaldi 

 is a reddish yellow, a blaze of red gold against the sea. One 

 never tires of gazing down into the Kuro Shiwo, as it flows 

 on and on, as it presents a marvelous and varied field of 

 life. Here is the harlequin-like fat-head, black and red 



