most beautiful submarine views on the coast. He did not exaggerate, as
we were soon to know, for the scene was truly wonderful, and rightly
named. All kinds of sea life began to pass before our eyes, like the
fast changing figures of a kaleidoscope. Here the delicate sea moss
lay like a green carpet, dotted here and there with a touch of purple,
making fantastic figures; a place where the sea fairies might dance
and hold their revels, as the peasant girls of Normandy dance on the
village green.

Close beside this fairy playground great gray rocks rose like
sentinels, as if to warn off trespassers. Clinging to their rugged
sides were starfish of all sizes and colors, varying from white to
red, with all the intervening shades. Sea urchins, those porcupines of
the deep, with long, prickly spines, looking like a lady's pincushion,
were in profusion, and clung tenaciously to every rock. Now our boat
glides over a cañon whose rugged sides extend away down into the
depths, and on either side the verdure grows tier on tier, like a
veritable forest. We wonder what denizens of the deep are lurking
under the shadows and amid the stately aisles, to dart out on the
unsuspecting victim.

On we glide over the beautiful sea anemone, half animal, half
vegetable, with its colors as variegated as a rose garden. Seaweed and
kelp wave to us as we pass, long-stemmed sea grasses moving by the
action of the waves, like a feather boa worn by some sea nymph, twist
and turn like a thing alive; tall, feathery plumes, as white as snow,
or as green as emerald, toss to and fro, and make obeisance to old
Neptune. Sea onions, with stems thirty feet long, and bulbous
air-filled sacks, reach out their long snaky arms, like an octopus,
and woe to the swimmer who becomes entangled in their slimy folds.