The Anderson intelligencer. [volume] (Anderson Court House, S.C.) 1860-1914, 1873-07-24
Why the Red Sea is Called Red.

| A question that has puzzled scholars, found
solution some time since in the observation
of an American submarine diver. Smiths
Bible Dictionary discusses learnedly the name
of the Red Sea, written e eputhpG thalGssa in
the Septuagint. The Dictionary surmises that
the name was derived from the red western
mountains, red coral zoophytes, ETC., and ap.
pears to give little weight to the real and nat
ural reason which came under our Americans
notice. On one occasion the diver observed,
while under sea, that the curious, wayering
shadows, which cross the lustrous, golden floor,
like Frauenhofer's lines on the spectrum, be-
gan to change and lose themselves. A purple
glory of intermingled colors darkened the
violet curtains of the sea chambers, reddening
all glints and tinges with an angry fire. In
stead of that lustrous golden armament, the
thallassphere darkened to crimson and opal.
The walls grew purple, the floor as red as
blood the deep itself was purpled with the
venous hue of deoxidized life-currents.
The view on the surface vas even more mag
nifcent. The sea at first assumed the light
tawny or yellowish red of sherry wine. Anon
ance; as far as eye could see, and flashing in
the crystalline splendor of the Arabian sun,
was glorious sea of rose. The dusky red
sandstone hills, with border of white sand
and green and fowered foliage, like an elabo-
rately wrought cup of Bohemian glass enam-
eled with brilliant flowers, held the sparkling
liquid petals of that rosy sea. The surface, on
examination, proved to be covered with thin
brick dust layer of infusoria slightly tinged
with orange. Placed in white glass bottle,
this changed into a deep violet, but the wide
surface of the e~t"rnal sea was of that mag
nifcent and brill. rose-color. 1t was new
and pleasing example of the lustrous, ever
varying beauty of the ocean world. 1t was
caused by diatomaceoe, minute alga, which
under the microscope revealed delicate threads
in tiny bundles, and containing rings, like
blood-disks, of that curious coloring matter in
tiny tubes
This miracle of beauty is not without its
analogies in other seas. The meduse of the
Arctic sea, an allied existence, people the
ultramarine blue of the cold, pure sea with
the vivid patches'of living green thirty miles
in diameter. These minute organism are
doubly curious from their power of astonish-
ing production and the strange electric fire
they display. Minute as these microscopic
creatures are, every motion and fash is the
result. of yolition, and not mere chepic or
mechanic phosphorescence. The Pdo6caris
light flashing cirrus, on being irritated, in
brilliant kindling sparks, increasing in in
tensity until the whole organism is illumi-
mated. The living fire washes over its back,
and pencils in greenish yellow light its
microscopic outline. Nor do these little crea-
lures lack beauty of their own. Their
minute shields of pure translucent silex are
deliberately wrought in microscopic symbols
of mimic heraldry. They are the chivalry
of the deep, the tiny knights with lance and
cuirass, and oval bossy shield carved in quaint
conceits and ornamental fashion. Nor must
we despise them, when we reflect upon their
power Of aecretion. The Galkionelle, invisible
to the naked eye, can, of their heraldic shields
and hinty armor, make two cubic feet of Blin
polishing slate in four days. By straining sea-
water, a web of greenish cloth of gold, illumi-
mated by their play of selfgenerated electric
light, has been collected. Humboldt and
Ehrenberg speak of their voracity, their power
of discharging electricity at will, and their
sporting about, exhibiting an intelligent en-
joyment of the life God has given to them.
Man and his works perish, but the monuments
of the infusoria are the finty ribs of the sea,
the giant bones of huge continents, heaped
into mountain ranges over which the granite
and porphyry have set their stony seal forever.
Man thriyes in his little zone; the populous
infusoria crowd every nook of earth from the
remote poles to the burning equatorial belt
LlppincotPs Magazine.