BEAUTIFUL SEA WATER. 215 
count must be made, because, as our yacht was in motion, the 
line could not have been perpendicular. 
The water of the harbor is most exquisitely colored. It is a 
soft, delicate, brilliant green, wholly unlike any of the countless 
shades of grcen seen in the vegetable world. When the waves 
are gently rolling in a brilliant sunlight, they gleam and sparkle 
jn a manner but faintly represented by the most beautifully tinted 
silks when their graceful folds are in motion under a strong light. : 
It cannot be properly described upon paper, and if faithfully imi- 
tated upon canvass by the most gifted artist he would be charged 
by art critics and connoisseurs with painting the ideal, and with 
being color mad. One never tires of looking at it, but soon gets 
out of descriptive and eulogistic adjectives, and rests with a final 
declaration that it is a brilliant, moving, liquid, sparkling, lovely 
torquoise. At times, when the winds and sunlight are particu- 
larly favorable, such color effects are produced that practical, 
prosaic men scem to vie with the more susceptible and apprecia- 
tive ladies in their exclamations of astonishment and pleasure. 
A lady in our party on one occasion when we visited the corals, 
exclaimed while gazing, feasting and almost getting intoxicated 
upon this wonderful exhibition of color, ‘‘ What would our 
friends at home say if they could only see this! They think that 
they know water, but they don’t.” 
Occasional rifts in the limestone bed of the harbor vary the 
prevailing color with ribbons of the deepest and darkest blue, 
while the ocean outside is seen to darkly mirror the softer blue 
of the sky. Often also there is at midday a warm glow above 
the horizon like that which heralds the ushering in of a new day. 
As we near the homes of the corals the foaming and dashing 
of the breakers over coral reefs and submerged rocks reminds one 
of our party of the icy spray of an Alpine avalanche, and adds a 
new and pleasing variety to the view, while the neighboring 
