--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 with
vitality;--over all the dunes there is a constant susurration, a
blattering and swarming of crustacea;--through all the sea there is a
ceaseless play of silver lightning,--flashing of myriad fish.
Sometimes the shallows are thickened with minute, transparent,
crab-like organisms,--all colorless as gelatine. There are days also
when countless medusae drift in--beautiful veined creatures that throb
like hearts, with perpetual systole and diastole of their diaphanous
envelops: some, of translucent azure or rose, seem in the flood the
shadows or ghosts of huge campanulate flowers;--others have the
semblance of strange living vegetables,--great milky tubers, just
beginning to sprout. But woe to the human skin grazed by those shadowy
sproutings and spectral stamens!--the touch of glowing iron is not more
painful... Within an hour or two after their appearance all these
tremulous jellies vanish mysteriously as they came.

Perhaps, if a bold swimmer, you may venture out alone a long way--once!
Not twice!--even in company. As the water deepens beneath you, and you
feel those ascending wave-currents of coldness arising which bespeak
profundity, you will also begin to feel innume