mostly to painters of West Indian scenery;--once more, under the
blaze of noon, it changes to a waste of broken emerald. With
evening, the horizon assumes tints of inexpressible
sweetness,--pearl-lights, opaline colors of milk and fire; and in
the west are topaz-glowings and wondrous flushings as of nacre.
Then, if the sea sleeps, it dreams of all these,--faintly,
weirdly,--shadowing them even to the verge of heaven.

Beautiful, too, are those white phantasmagoria which, at the
approach of equinoctial days, mark the coming of the winds. Over
the rim of the sea a bright cloud gently pushes up its head. It
rises; and others rise with it, to right and left--slowly at
first; then more swiftly. All are brilliantly white and
flocculent, like loose new cotton. Gradually they mount in
enormous line high above the Gulf, rolling and wreathing into an
arch that expands and advances,--bending from horizon to horizon.

A clear, cold breath accompanies its coming. Reaching the
zenith, it seems there to hang poised awhile,--a ghostly bridge
arching the empyrean,--upreaching its measureless span from
either underside of the world. Then the colossal phantom begins
to turn, as on a pivot of air,--always preserving its curvilinear
symmetry, but moving its unseen ends beyond and below the
sky-circle. And at last it floats away unbroken beyond the blue
sweep of the world, with a wind following after. Day after day,
almost at the same hour, the white arc rises, wheels, and passes
...

... Never a glimpse of rock on these low shores;--only long
sloping beaches and bars of smooth tawny sand. Sand and sea teem