... A nice old French gentleman from Guadeloupe presumes to say
this is not blue water--he declares it greenish (_verdâtre_).
Because I cannot discern the green, he tells me I do not yet know
what blue water is. _Attendez un peu!_...

... The sky-tone deepens as the sun ascends,--deepens
deliciously. The warm wind proves soporific. I drop asleep with
the blue light in my face,--the strong bright blue of the noonday
sky. As I doze it seems to burn like a cold fire right through
my eyelids. Waking up with a start, I fancy that everything is
turning blue,--myself included. "Do you not call this the real
tropical blue?" I cry to my French fellow-traveller. _"Mon
Dieu! non_," he exclaims, as in astonishment at the question;--
"this is not blue !" ...What can be _his_ idea of blue, I wonder!

Clots of sargasso float by,--light-yellow sea-weed. We are
nearing the Sargasso-sea,--entering the path of the trade-winds.
There is a long ground-swell, the steamer rocks and rolls, and
the tumbling water always seems to me growing bluer; but my
friend from Guadeloupe says that this color "which I call blue"
is only darkness--only the shadow of prodigious depth.

Nothing now but blue sky and what I persist in calling blue sea.
The clouds have melted away in the bright glow. There is no sign
of life in the azure gulf above, nor in the abyss beneath--there
are no wings or fins to be seen. Towards evening, under the
slanting gold light, the color of the sea deepens into
ultramarine; then the sun sinks down behind a bank of copper-
colored cloud.