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90 Discolored Waters of the Gulf of California. [February, 
the whole surface of the water was of a milky-red color. The 
body that gives to this water the strangely caustic properties is 
not a mineral, but an animal—a flagellate infusorium—the common 
Noctiluca miliaris. In this well-sheltered bay they accumulate 
from their light specific gravity at the top of the water. How 
thick the stratum was we did not ascertain, but we may form 
some idea of its extent from the fact that we steamed through the 
tract in a straight line for four or five hours at a speed of about 
five knots per hour. We dipped a canvas bucket in their midst, 
and when the water drained off it remained half filled with the 
animalcule. They resemble minute grains of boiled sago. Every 
drop of water was literally crowded with them. They were so 
small that it required two or three to cover the area of a pin’s 
head. It is very easy to comprehend how, if this bay were 
agitated by the slightest cause, it would glow as a broad sheet of 
living fire. 
The Spanish sailors bathed in this water, and according to ~ 
their chroniclers their bodies were covered with boils and ulcers — 
in consequence. They were only half-way right when they at- — 
tributed their infirmities to the water. The lashes of the little — 
noctiluca were, undoubtedly, the exciting agents—the direct cause 
of their troubles; but that they were insufficient, in themselves, 
-to account for the severity of the symptoms the evidence of our — 
own men under different conditions of bodily health sufficiently — 
proves. That their ulcers were similar to the effects of scurvy — 
they recognized; and that a scorbutic condition of the blood — 
played an important part in their production is evident. All — 
sailors in those days were more or less the subjects of scurvy, which 
was a greater obstacle to the spread of commerce than were the 
small crafts of the navigators. It is a disease that often manifests 
itself in the form of boils and ulcers, and it exaggerates all trivial 
bruises and injuries of the skin. If our own sailers had been 
. scorbutic when they bathed in the water the same train of symp- 
toms would undoubtedly have followed; and, as it was, the skin, 
in places, became considerably inflamed and swollen, but the only 
disagreeable symptoms were the burning and tingling that ac 
companied the inflammation, which was of short duration. 
