CHAPTER XV 



WINDOWS FOR SEA ANGLERS 



' " I wonder why they have three classes of tickets in a glass-bottom fishing 

 boat," queried the tenderfoot, who had a third-class ticket. Jiist then the 

 anchor went down and the captain sang out : " First-class passengers, fish ; 

 second-class, bait hooks ; third-class, clean fish." ' 



Avalon Ancient Story. 



GLASS-BOTTOM boats were not invented for anglers, but I 

 conceived the idea in 1862, on the Florida reef (as doubtless 

 others had before me), to enable us to find rare corals and the 

 rare queen conch in comparatively deep water, upon which I 

 would dive down and bring them up. At Santa CataMna Island, 

 California, an extraordinary fleet of glass-bottom craft has been 

 developed by the exigencies of the situation, and mainly used 

 to enable the passengers to examine the splendid sea bottom, 

 the floating gardens of the sea. Many anglers rent the small 

 glass-bottom boats and fish from them, sitting comfortably and 

 gazing down through the plate-glass window, so watching the 

 game as it approaches and takes the lure. 



-N"o picture of the imagination could be more beautiful than 

 these Catalina submarine gardens. They are well named, as 

 they are literal gardens of the sea, a band of green seaweed, of 

 infinite variety, size and shape, encircling the sides of a mountain 

 peak twenty-two miles long and from four to six wide which rises 

 from a base nearly a mile beneath the sea to an altitude of one- 

 half mile above it. The shores are precipitous and abrupt ; 

 the zone of seaweed is just at the surface and encircles the entire 

 island. In the bays at the mouths of the canons, as Avalon, 

 Descanso, Cabrillo and others, there is shoal water and a sandy 



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