278 THE ATLANTIC. [cHap. IV. 
white roofs are altogether peculiar, and as the houses and cot- 
tages of the rural population are scattered over the whole isl- 
and, so as almost to run into one continuous straggling village, 
the white squares gleaming among the dark trees produce 
rather a pleasing effect, and one which is certainly very charac- 
teristic of Bermudas. 
Saturday, April 5th.—A. lovely, clear morning; the sea per- 
fectly smooth, and the sky almost cloudless. It was so early in 
the season that the temperature (68° F. in the shade) was not 
oppressive. The view from the ship (the Camber); the Gov- 
ernment basin with the floating-dock, the largest in the world, 
and the substantial buildings of the dock-yard, and the Royal 
Alfred, the Terror, the [rresistible, and a number of gun-boats ; 
and the life and music and color inseparable from a military 
station, to the west of us; the tortuous channels with which we 
were soon to be very familiar between the reefs, marked out by 
divers-colored buoys, and leading, among the many islands of 
the “ great sound,” to Hamilton, to the south; the north coast 
of the main island stretching in a succession of shallow bays 
and wooded knolls and low cliffs, from Spanish Point to the 
high grounds at the entrance of Castle Harbor, to the east; and 
the wonderful variety and brilliancy of color of the sea all 
around us—were very beautiful. 
Captain Nares and I went in the forenoon to pay our re- 
spects to Admiral Fanshawe, commanding on the North Amer- 
ican station, and to the governor, General Lefroy. We rowed 
across the glassy sea, clearly mapped out into patches of bright 
purple and stripes of the most vivid green by the reefs and the 
sandy spaces between them. Over the reefs in some places the 
water was only a fathom deep or less, and we could see the great 
round masses of brain-coral beneath us, and the groves of pur- 
ple Gorgonie and all kinds of feathery zoophytes, interspersed 
with yellow sponges and bunches of sea-weed in all shades of 
olive and bright green and red. Clarence Cove, the landing- 
