NORTH AMERICA. 1 6 5 
picious intercourfe performing their evolutions: 
there .are no figns of enmity, no attempt to devour 
each other ; the different bands feem peaceably and 
complaifantly to move a little afide, as it were to 
make room for others to pafs by. 
But behold yet fomething far more admirable, 
fee whole armies defcending into an abyfs, into the 
mouth of the bubbling fountain: they difappear! are 
they gone for ever ? is it real ? I raife my eyes with 
terror and ailonifhment ; I look down again to 
the fountain with anxiety, when behold them as 
it were emerging from the blue ether of another 
world, apparently at a vaft diftance ; at their ffrft 
appearance, no bigger than flies or minnows ; now 
gradually enlarging, their brilliant colours begin to 
paint the fluid. 
Now they come forward rapidly, and inffantly 
emerge, with the elaftic expanding column of crys- 
talline waters, into the circular bafon or funnel: 
fee now how gently they rife, forne upright, others 
obliquely, or feem to lie as it were on their Tides, 
fuffering themfelves to be gently lifted or borne up 
by the expanding fluid towards the furface, fail- 
ing or floating like butterflies in the cerulean ether : 
then again they as gently defeend, diverge and move 
off; when they rally, form again, and rejoin their 
kindred tribes. 
This amazing and delightful feene, though real, 
appears at firft but as a piece of excellent paint- 
ing; there feems no medium; you imagine the 
pidture to be within a few inches of your eyes, and 
that you may without the lead difficulty touch any 
£>ne of the fiffi, or put your finger upon the croco- 
dile’s eye, when it really is twenty or thirty feet 
inkier water,, 
M 3 
And 
