LAND AND SEA BREEZES. 107 



mind in sleep, so do sweet phantoms liover about the land-breeze 

 as it slumbers upon the sea. The shore seems to approach and to 

 display all its charms to the mariner in the offing. All objects 

 become distinct and more clearly delineated,* while, upon the sea, 

 small fishing-boats loom up like large vessels. The seaman, drift- 

 ing along the coast, and misled by the increasing clearness and 

 mirage, believes that he has been driven by a current toward the 

 land ; he casts the lead, and looks anxiously out for the sea- 

 breeze, in order to escape from what he believes to be threatening 

 danger.! The planks burn under his feet ; in vain he spreads the 

 awning to shelter himself from the broiling sun. Its rays are op- 

 pressive ; repose does not refresh ; motion is not agreeable. 



239. "The inhabitants of the deep, awakened by the clear light 

 of day, prepare themselves for labor. Corals, and thousands of 

 Crustacea, await, perhaps impatiently, the coming of the sea-breeze, 

 which shall cause evaporation to take place more rapidly, and thus 

 provide them with a bountiful store of building material for their 

 picturesque and artfully constructed dwellings : these they know 

 how to paint and to polish in the depths of the sea more beauti- 

 fully than can be accomplished by any human art. Like them, 

 also, the plants of the sea are dependent upon the winds, upon the 

 clouds, and upon the sunshine ; for upon these depend the vapor 

 and the rains which feed the streams that bring nourishment for 

 them into the sea.f 



240. "When the sun reaches the zenith, and his stern eye, with 

 burning glare, is turned more and more upon the Java Sea, the air 

 seems to fall into a magnetic sleep ; yet, even as the magnetizer 

 exercises his will upon his subject, and the latter, with uncertain 

 and changeable gestures, gradually puts himself in motion, and 

 sleeping obeys that will, so also we see the slow efforts of the sea- 



* The transparency of the atmosphere is so great that we can sometimes discover 

 Venus in the sky in the middle of the day. — Jansen. 



t Especially in the rainy season the land looms very greatly ; then we see mount- 

 ains which are from 5000 to 6000 feet high at a distance of 80 or 100 English miles. 



t The archipelago of coral islands on the north side of the Straits of Sunda is 

 remarkable. Before the salt water flowed from the Straits it was deprived of the solid 

 matter of which the Thousand Islands are constructed. A similar group of islands is 

 found between the Straits of Macassar and Balie. — Jansen. 



