-168 ISLES OF SUMMER. 
While sailing in the Bahama waters, ‘the famous sargasso or 
gulf weed, cannot fail to attract attention- It is. constantly i in 
sight, and in that portion of the ocean world, is 
‘Ever drifting, drifting, drifting 
Ontheshifting - | 
Currents of the restless main.” 
Columbus encountered it upon his first voyage to the new 
world, a few days after he left the Canaryislands. The frequent 
mention which he makes of it in his journal is evidence that it 
abounded then asnow. He also noticed the. crabs that it con- 
tained—for little crustacea, it seems, have long been accustomed 
to have their domicils in these fragile and floating abodes, which, 
no doubt, withstand the violence of an angry ocean better than 
the strongest ships of oak and iron that man ean make. This 
weed is sometimes encountered in such quantities as to consti- 
tute what has not been inappropriately termed ‘‘sea gardens.” 
The following very interesting and suggestive description, we 
copy from Kingsley’s ‘‘ At Last:” 
“One glance at a bit of the weed as it flodits past, shows that 
_it is like no fucus of our shores, or anything we ever saw before. 
_ The difference in looks is indefinable in words, but cléar enough. 
_ One sees in a moment that the sargassos, of which there are sev- 
_ eral species on«tropical shores, are a genus-of thomselves and by 
_. themselves; and a certain awe may, if the beholder-be at once 
scientific and poetical, come over him at the first sight of this 
famous and unique variety thereof, which has lost ages’since.the 
habit of growing on rock or sea bottom, but propagates itself _ 
forever floating; and feeds among its branches a whole family of 
fish, crabs, cuttlefish, zoophytes and mollusks, which, like the 
plant that shelters them, are found no where ‘else in the world. 
And that awe, springing from the ‘‘scientific usé of the imagi- 
