DESCniPTION OF ARABIA. 67 



Souf with the Arabs, signifymg the " Sea of Green 

 Weeds." These beautiful productions attracted the 

 admiration of antiquity. Strabo seems to alhide to 

 them when he spealcs of trees, resembUng the laurel 

 and the olive, growing at the bottom and along the 

 eastern coast of the Red Sea, which at ebb tide 

 were left uncovered, though at other times they 

 were wholly under water ; a circumstance deemed 

 the more surprising when contrasted with the naked- 

 ness of the adjacent shores, Burckhardt remarks 

 that the coral in the inlet of Akaba is red, and that 

 in the Gulf of Suez the white is chiefly to be seen ; 

 facts which may reconcile the discordant statements 

 of Bruce, Valentia, Henniker, and other modern 

 travellers. 



All who have frequented the Red Sea have ob- 

 served the luminous appearance or phosphorescence 

 of its waters. " It was beautiful," says a picturesque 

 writer who sailed from IMocha to Cosseir, " to look 

 down into this brightly transparent sea, and mark 

 the coral here in large masses of honeycomb rock, 

 there in light branches of a pale red hue, and the 

 beds of green seaweed, and the golden sand, and 

 the shells, and the fish sporting round the vessel, 

 and making colours of a beauty to the eye which is 

 not their own. Twice or thrice we ran on after 

 dark for an hour or two ; and though we were all 

 familiar with the sparkling of the sea round the boat 

 at night, never have I seen it in other waters so 

 superlatively splendid. A rope dipped in it and drawn 

 forth came up as a string of gems ; but with a life, 

 and light, and motion, the diamond does not know."* 

 Those sealights have been explained by a diversity 

 of causes ; but the singular brilliancy of the Red Sea 

 seems owing to fish-spawn and animalculze, a con- 

 jecture which receives some corroboration from the 

 circumstance that travellers who mention it visited 



* Scenes and Impressions, p. 35. 



