THE AQUARIUMS. 219 



Besides the coral beds there are two *' aquariums," as they are 

 very appropriately termed, in the harbor of Nassau, easily acces- 

 sible, Avhich few, if any, of Nassau's visitors fail to see. One 

 consists of the keel and small portions of the attached ribs of a 

 wrecked vessel lying upon the bottom of the harbor. The other 

 IS what is left of another vessel wrecked not far from the first, 

 with its load of lime in barrels; tbcse barrels are distinctly seen 

 in the clear water. Great quantities of fish like those we have 

 partially described, are at all times to be seen swimming in and 

 around tliesc old wrecks; as the coral bowers are so much more 

 beautiful, we conclude they are here not from choice but from 

 compulsion, and that they have been driven out of the Marine 

 Gardens of Eden to these forbidding-looking places on account 

 of their piscatory ''indiscretions." Possibly they colonized for 

 want of sufficient room. Perhaps, like ourselves, they are "on 

 an excursion." It may be that they have some religious system 

 and are here doing penance for real or imagined sins, or hope to 

 secure divine favor by thus renouncing the gay world in which 

 the voluptuous marine Epicureans are indulging. For surely no 

 one can doubt that living, as such fish for the most part do, in a 

 little world of more than oriental magnificence of fact and fable, 

 they have a delicate and refined taste and an esthetic nature 

 which peculiarly fits them for the enjoyment of nature's most 

 lavish gifts to them of the beautiful in form and color. 



Another marine garden very much visited is called "the coral 

 reef." Being much farther off, and lying to the windward, in 

 a position more exposed to the ocean, it is only occasionally that 

 there is such a combination of force and direction of wind as to 

 favor a visit to the reef. It must be sufficiently fair to enable 

 the yacht to go and return in a certain limited time, and not so 

 strong as to make rough sea. The water at this reef being more 

 terated, the corals thrive better, and their works are on a more 



