1878. | Discolored Waters of the Gulf of California. 89 
1835 Mr. Darwin investigated that off the coast of Peru. The 
earliest notice we have of its existence in that locality is the be- 
ginning of the nineteenth century, and a good authority might be » 
cited for its existence there as late as 1872. In the latter year 
while sailing down the eastern coast of South America we passed 
through a tract, while off the mouth of the Rio de la Plata, where 
the surface of the water was covered with a thick scum, resembling 
saw-dust. Darwin, in 1832, or forty years previous, found it 
further north, in the vicinity of the Abrolhos Islets. In this case 
the material that discolors the water belongs to the vegetable 
kingdom. It is a “ minute cylindrical conferva,” the 7richodesmium 
erythreum. According to Ehrenberg, the color of the water of 
the Red Sea is due to the presence of a “ peculiar genus of alga,” 
and Darwin states, on another authority, that it is the same species 
as that found off the coast of Brazil. In the latter locality it 
would certainly argue a defect of the vision to call the water red. 
Old sailors call it whales’ feed, which, with them, is the generic 
title of everything that discolors the water of the ocean. 
EP eee a a a 
Ne ET EY EE 
=- “The brick-colored and corrosive waters of certain parts of the 
gulf-head ” received an easier solution at our hands than the more 
vermilion patches of the mouth of the gulf. The former is spoken 
of as being so extremely caustic as to remove the skin from the 
body like a blister, and to cause obstinate boils and ulcers, similar 
to those produced by scurvy, and which lasted for a long time. Some 
have gone so far as to even state that it would rot the clothes of 
those who were incautious in meddling with it. A recent com- 
piler has endeavored to account for this peculiar property of the 
water on the supposition of an “excess of the iodides, bromides 
and sulphurets of minerals, derived, doubtless, from the abundance 
of volcanic material so common in these portions of the gulf.” 
_ But as is common in such cases of explanatory guessing, his an- 
_. Swer is not the true one. 
Most of our information concerning this water has come down ` 
to us with the accounts of the voyages of Father Consag and 
Ugarte, both of whom confined their explorations, in these parts, 
to the head waters of the gulf; the former in 1746, and the latter 
in 1721. 
Ee ney Mone ie Soe See eee ere 
Se ee p 
ple Ae ee toe eee ae 
_ We encountered this peculiar caustic water in about the same 
__ locality assigned it by Consag and others. In the Bay of Muleje, 
_ an indentation in the coast more than half way up the peninsula, 
