292 SEA ANEMONES. 



panded disk was nearly as wide. Fringed tentacle several inches 

 in length would surround a disk whose neck was more often over 

 than under six inches in length. When touched they would 

 coil into a mass of leathery pulp as large as a medium-sized musk 

 melon. 



This fine floral carpet was everywhere interspersed with green 

 echini, some large as a good-sized sunflower ; myriads of starfish, 

 with yellow, red, or brown backs were basking in some clear space 

 or curled up to fit the surfaces of the rocks upon which they 

 lay. Suddenly we came upon a single bed, it must have been 

 nearly half an acre in extent, in the middle of the passage, where an 

 almost perfectly level spot appeared so covered with these anemones 

 that their waving fringes intermingled to hide the bottom and pre- 

 sent a bed truly of the most exquisite and fairylike texture. Truly 

 were I to be buried in the ocean, I could not nor would I ask 

 for a more enchanting spot upon which to rest. I am sure 

 that no Arabian Nights' tale ever pictured a more imaginative 

 scene of splendor, than this simple bed of sea flowers — this " wind 

 flower" of the water formed in reality. 



We left Dead Island on Wednesday the 23rd, and sailing through 

 the same narrow pass, which opened into a broad bay-like harbor 

 beyond and a series of intricate channels, coves and islands, we at 

 length reached Triangle harbor, another of those pirate-like coves 

 in which the coast so profusely abounds. The harbor is well shel- 

 tered from the seas, but hard to enter, being narrow and shallow. 

 High hills and cliffs are all about it, the highest point, on the 

 right, being a hill with lofty sides extending perpendicularly 

 nearly to its very crest, which is about three hundred and eighty 

 feet above the sea. We threw stones from this crest into the sea 

 and found that the top receded, from a point that overhung the 

 water about midway of this height, so much that the stones we 

 threw with all our force fell into the water behind the cliff and con- 

 sequently out of our sight. Back from the hill grew a luxuriant 

 growth of vegetation, while a small but deep pond, partially sur- 



