regions where the calm of nature is never disturbed by storms.

... Morning: still steaming south, through a vast blue day. The
azure of the heaven always seems to be growing deeper. There is
a bluish-white glow in the horizon,--almost too bright to look
at. An indigo sea.... There are no clouds; and the splendor
endures until sunset.

Then another night, very luminous and calm. The Southern
constellations burn whitely.... We are nearing the great
shallows of the South American coast.



XXIV.


... It is the morning of the third day since we left Barbadoes,
and for the first time since entering tropic waters all things
seem changed. The atmosphere is heavy with strange mists; and
the light of an orange-colored sun, immensely magnified by
vapors, illuminates a greenish-yellow sea,--foul and opaque, as
if stagnant.... I remember just such a sunrise over the Louisiana
gulf-coast.

We are in the shallows, moving very slowly. The line-caster
keeps calling, at regular intervals: "Quarter less five, sir!"
"And a half four, sir!" ... There is little variation in his
soundings--a quarter of a fathom or half a fathom difference.
The warm air has a sickly heaviness, like the air of a swamp;