could distinguish a great city, built
in a wild, weird, grotesque style of architecture, thoroughly new to me,
yet grand in design, far above human conception.

There were castles on rocks, both the rock and the castle being formed
out of one immense piece of coral, either white or red. The rock was
hollowed out by nature, and natural staircases of the same material
branched off in different directions, and led to the castle above. There
were grottoes of mother-of-pearl, bridges of clustering and festooned
coral, intermixed with common rock, and overgrown in parts by large
quaint sea plants, which hung down in long creepers, entangling and
festooning themselves, crossing and recrossing each other, and
communicating the upper part of the city with the lower, the town being
built partly on hills, and partly in the valleys.

Immense pits and hollows in what in other cities would have been the
road, appeared to lead to some part of the city below. Crowds of the
inhabitants were seen emerging from these grottoes, and disappearing
through others. Several were seated in chariots of mother-of-pearl and
turtle-shell, drawn by some hideous sea monster. There were mermen,
bearded and muscular, bearing in their hands tridents; troops of
mermaids of every conceivable variety of beauty, from the blue eyes and
flaxen hair of the north, to the dark, Oriental type. Gigantic zoophytes
and sea anemones opened their petals at us from every parapet. Music and
singing was heard everywhere, and the submarine grottoes echoed with the
strains of fair mermaidens. Groups of dancers surrounded us as we
descended, twisting their lithesome bodies into all sorts of elegant and
fantastic attitudes; beautiful mer-children sported with the most
hideous sea monsters it was possible to conceive.

The city seemed wealthy, the inhabitants contented, and yet there was
little or no sign of industry amongst them. All the houses and palaces
were evidently formed by the hand of nature, save where here and there a
window or a mother-of-pearl roof or pavement betrayed manual skill.
Money, as I ascertained, was an article unknown to the submarines. They
had few wants, and lived peacefully among themselves.

As my fair bride and I swam through the streets of this great city
together, my appearance attracted great curiosity. The children were
frightened, and darted away into some grotto hard by. I heard an old
white-bearded merman, who had, doubtless, seen a great