ISLAND-BUILDERS. H 



Light, off the coast here, from which such a sight can 

 be had. Carysf ort Light is built in the open sea, with- 

 out a foot of land about it. It is an iron framework 

 of columns, strengthened by a network of braces and 

 girders, and the rooms in which the keeper lives are 

 about halfway up to the light, out of reach of the 

 waves, forty or fifty feet above the water. A balcony 

 runs about these rooms, and as the lighthouse is built 

 over one of the most beautiful and extensive fields of 

 coral on this or any other coast, the view presented 

 on looking from this balcony is more wonderful than 

 can well be imagined by one who has not seen it. 



The coral field spreads out around the lighthouse 

 as far as the eye can reach, and so transparent is the 

 water that the ocean bottom can be seen as plainly as 

 a garden lying beneath. The coral field is largely 

 made up of what are called leaf corals, with great 

 flat branches that grow one above another. Myriads 

 of fish play among these spreading branches, chasing 

 each other singly and in companies, darting about, 

 winding in and out the corals as if in a game of hide- 

 and-go-seek. Most of them are of very brilliant colors, 

 some of them of the most intense azure blue, others 

 bright blue and glossy black ; others, again, black band- 

 ed with gold ; and still others of a clear canary -yellow 

 beneath and a complementary rich purple above. ITow 

 and then a large fish — a shark, perhaps — passes by, and 

 all the small fry scatter among the corals and are seen 

 no more until their enemy is out of sight. Besides the 

 leaf corals there are many more still more beautiful 

 to be seen. Some are shaped like huge vases ; others 



