the rock by its strong beard,
that neither of the amateur pearl-divers could tear it off, and getting
soon exhausted and out of breath, they abandoned the attempt.

The submarine scenery of the lagoon was in this spot unusually varied
and beautiful, and the basin formed a bath, fit for the Nereids
themselves. Numbers of different kinds of shell-fish were attached to
the coral branches, or wedged into their interstices. Others were
feeding, and reflected the brightest colours with every motion. Purple
mullet, variegated rock-fish, and small ray-fish, were darting about
near the bottom. Another species of mullet, of a splendid changeable
blue and green, seemed to be feeding upon the little polyps protruding
from the coral tops. Shells, sea-plants, coral, and fishes, and the
slightest movement of the latter, even to the vibration of a tiny fin!
or the gentle opening of the gills in respiration, could be seen with
perfect distinctness in this transparent medium. But what chiefly
attracted attention, was the gay tints, and curious shapes, of the
innumerable zoophytes, or "flower animals," springing up from the sides
and bottom of the basin, and unfolding their living leaves above their
limestone trunks or stems which encased them. Blue, red, pink, orange,
purple, and green, were among the colours, and the variety of patterns
seemed absolutely endless: they mimicked, in their manner of growth, the
foliage of trees, the spreading antlers of the stag, globes, columns,
stars, feathery plumes, trailing vines, and all the wildest and most
graceful forms of terrestrial vegetation. Nothing was wanting to
complete this submarine shrubbery, even to the minutest details; there
were mosses, and ferns, and lichens, and spreading shrubs, and branching
trees; bunches of slender thread-like stems, swaying gently with the
motion of the water, might, (except for their pale, purplish, tint),
pass for rushes, or tussocks of reedy grass; and it required no effort
of the imagination to see fancifully shaped wild-flowers in the numerous
varieties of actiniae, or sea anemones, many of which bore the closest
resemblance to wood-pinks, asters, and carnations. The imitations of
these flowers were in some cases wonderfully perfect, even to their
delicate petals, which were represented by the slender, fringe-like
tentacles of the living polyp, protruding from its cell. Besides these
counterparts of land vegetation, there were waving sea-fans, s