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, which 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; these 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 these 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 
rated, the corals thrive better, and their works are on a more 
