Year: 1879

The Red sea Is so called from a certain
tawny tinge of its waters as well as for the
red coral in its coast, but why the black sea
should have that epithet 1t is difficult to say,
unless on account Of tne scowling, thunder
Gus appearance il presents in winter, when
it is swept by disastrous storms. The sea
on the southern coast of England is pecu-
liar light gray green caused by the chalk
cliffs which are being constantly eroded and
washed away by the ocean-billows. \ very
striking instance of water colored in this
way is seen in Northumberland straight,
Gulf of st. Lawrence, especially after a
storm. The soft, reddish shores of Prince
Edwards island are eaten away and alb
sorbed by the sea, which thus assumes a
rich coffee-color, very vivid, and, when
glistening in the sun, and tinged here and
there with reflections of the blue overhead,
extraordinarily rich in tone, and strongly
resembling polished syenite. Ii is well
known that the Amazon dyes the sea for
hundred of miles beyond the land with the
ochre-tinted silt it washes down from the
pampas and the far-off mountains of Peru


The warmth of the water in tropical lati-
tudes seems to have the same effect on the
] hAcAi'tNAo Va NiiN btt tAldt tliC Has
on the temperament of man. The barracu-
da is savage and aggressive as tiger, and
the cruel voracity of the King of the Canni-
bal islands is quite eclipsed by the horrible,
/ treacherous, stealthy nature Of that sea pir-
ate, the man-eating shark. Ii is stated,
and from what | have heard | am inclined
10 thing it is true, that the shark prefers
white men TO negroes, and will only attack
and eat the latter on rare occasions. An
English frigate's crew on the edge of the
/ Bahama bank killed sixty of these monsters
in one days sport few daysago sonumer-
GUS are they in those waters. This might
have been a means taken by the British
Government 10 revenge itself, as on some
savage tribe, regardless of diplomatic re-
mOnstrances and the courtesy of nations


for the liberty taken by the sharks with the
crew of an English ship-of-war some years
earlier The Magpie schooner was cruising
off Cuba for pirates when she was struck by
an ''ox-eyc" squall-a wind coming with
out other warning than a small round cloud
in clear sky, rushing with the rapidity of
a cannon-ball. She was over in an instant,
and, to make long story short, the whole
crew but two were devoured by school of
sharks which were lying in wait. Gliding
in among the hOrror-stricken seamen, they
played with them for a while as cat does
with her prey. But the first taste of blood
was like alcohol to a drunkard, and in
few moments only two of the crew sur
yived in boat which had fioated off from
the vessel as she went down. After they
had been in the boat several days, parched,
starved and roasted by the tropic sun, a
brig hove in sight, slowly passing two miles
away with a very light morning air just
filling the sails. As she did not seem to see
the boat, one of the men jumped into the
water and swan off TO her. lie was fol-
lowed by two sharks, which kept him COM
pany the whole of that long, awful SWIM


But he scared them off by Tapping his
jacket-the shark is great coward. Just
as he was about to give up the race in de
spair, the man at the wheel looked over the
rail and he saw him. 4 boat was lowered,
and he and his shipmate were saved. Moth
ing one sees at sea so sends an involuntary
shudder through him as to see the edge of
the dorsal fin of a shark floating like an up
right spar on the surface of the water You
know at once that mischief is lurking near