-16- 
At Sea on Steamer "Madiana". 
1894 
February.22 Noon observation: lat. 19»38; long, 65" 17; run 287 miles. 
11 A. M. Practically the same conditions as yes¬ 
terday but more clouds and an even bluer sea. Miss Francis 
identifies the color of the general surface as "dilute 
ultra-marine", that of the water churned by our screw as 
"robin’s-egg blue". 
When I first came on deck, we were running through 
great fields of Sargossa weed, not continuous or unbroken 
fields but rafts of varying sizes, floating so thickly that 
in many places the rich, tawny orange nearly equalled the 
immaculate blue interspaces — a painted ocean, so remark¬ 
able as to be positively unreal. The Sargossa was not here 
disposed in windrows but was very evenly dispersed. It 
came to an end rather abruptly and now there is not so much 
as the smallest fragment in sight. 
Flying Fish Flying Fish are abundant but not so generally dis¬ 
tributed as yesterday, occurring now at comparatively infre¬ 
quent intervals but in large schools which rise like flocks 
of silvery birds and skim off over the bright blue sea. 
One came aboard during the night and I have just examined 
it with some care. It is a broad-backed, solid fish of about 
a quarter of a pound in weight and measures as follows: 
Length, 9.25; stretch of "wings", 10.75; length of "wing" 
(i.e. lateral pectoral fin) 4.75; greatest breadth of wing 
