BLUE WATER 83 



Even the great ocean has a dark purplish-blue colour, 

 but never the bright blue of clear water in shallow seas 

 with light-coloured or white bottom. 



One of the most beautiful exhibitions of the colour of 

 clear water in various thicknesses which I know, is at the 

 entrance of the Rhone into the Lake of Geneva. The 

 thick pale-coloured brownish-white sediment of the river 

 shoots out for a quarter of a mile or more into the dark 

 blue waters of the deep lake, and on a bright sunny day as 

 it subsides reflects the light upwards from different depths 

 through the clear water. Where it has sunk but little the 

 colour is green, owing to the influence of the yellow mud. 

 Farther on it is ultra-marine blue, and then, where it has 

 sunk deeper, we get full indigo tints. The movement of 

 the water and its churning up by the steamers' paddles 

 add to the variety of effects, since the foam of air-bubbles 

 submerged throws up the light through the water. It is 

 not possible to doubt as one watches the admixture of the 

 river and the lake, and the eddies and hanging walls of 

 sediment, that one is floating over a vast depth of 

 magnificent blue self-coloured fluid which is traversed by 

 the sunlight in ways and degrees varying according to its 

 depth and the volume of the pale mud of the in-rushing 

 Rhone and the abundance of fine air-bubbles " churned " 

 into the water by the paddle-wheels of the steamer. 



