yet brought its structure sufficiently near the surface, to obstruct our passage over it. We are in five or six fathoms of water, but this water is so clear, that we are enabled to see the most minute object, quite distinctly. We have “slowed” the engine the better to enjoy the beautiful sub-marine landscape; and look! we are passing over a miniature forest, instinct with life. There are beautifully branching trees of madrepores, whose prongs are from one to two feet in length, and sometimes curiously interlaced. Each one of the branches, as well as the trunk, has a number of little notches in it. These are the cells in which the little stone-mason is at work. Adhering to the branches of these miniature trees, like mosses, and lichens, you see sundry formations that you might mistake for leaves. These are also cellular, and are the workshops of the little masons. Scattered around, among the trees, are waving the most gorgeous of fans, and, what we might call sea-ferns, and palms. These are of a variety of brilliant colors, purple predominating.
Lying on the smooth, white sand, are boulders of coral in a variety of shapes—some, like the domes of miniature cathedrals; some, perfectly spherical; some, cylindrical. These, and the trees, are mostly of a creamy white, though occasionally, pink, violet, and green are discovered. As the passage of the steamer gives motion to the otherwise smooth sea, the fans, ferns, and palms wave, gracefully, changing their tints as the light flashes upon them, through the pellucid waters. The beholder looks entranced, as though he were gazing upon a fairy scene, by moonlight; and to add to the illusion, there is a movement of life, all new to the eye, in every direction. The beautiful star-fish, with its five points, as equally, and regularly arranged, as though it had been done by the rule of the mathematician, with great worm-like molluscs, lie torpid on the white sand. Jelly-fish, polypi, and other nondescript shapes, float about in the miniature forest; and darting hither and thither, among the many-tinted ferns, some apparently in sport, and some in pursuit of their prey, are hundreds of little fishes, sparkling, and gleaming in silver, and gold, and green, and scarlet.
The most curious of these is the parrot-fish, whose head is shaped like the beak of the parrot, and whose color is light green. How wonderfully full is the sea of animal life! All this picture is animal life; for what appears to be the vegetable portion of this sub-marine landscape, is scarcely vegetable at all. The waving ferns, fans, and palms are all instinct with animal life. The patient little toiler of the sea, the coralline insect, is busy with them, as he is with his limestone trees. He is helping on their formation by his secretions, and it is difficult to say what portion of them is vegetable, what, mineral, and what, animal.
I had been an hour, and more, entranced by the fairy sub-marine forest, and its denizens, which I have so imperfectly described, when the sun sank behind the Andes, and night threw her mantle upon the waters, changing all the sparkling colors of forest, and fish, to sombre gray, and admonishing me, that it was time to return to every-day life, and the duties of the ship. “Let her have the steam,” said I to the officer of the deck, as I arose from my bent posture over the ship’s rail; and, in a moment more, the propeller was thundering us along at our usual speed.
At eleven P. M., we were up with the island of Margarita, and as I designed to run the passage between it, and the main land, I preferred daylight for the operation; and so, sounding in thirty-two fathoms of water, I hove the ship to, under her trysails for the night, permitting her steam to go down. The next day, the weather still continued clear and pleasant, the trade-wind being sufficiently light not to impede our headway, for we were steaming, as the reader will recollect, nearly head to wind. We had experienced but little adverse current during the last twenty-four hours, and were making very satisfactory progress. I was now making a passage, rather than cruising, as a sail is a rare sight, in the part of the ocean I was traversing.
At meridian we passed that singular group of islands called the Frayles—Anglice, friars—jutting up from the sea in cones of different shapes, and looking, at a distance, not unlike so many hooded monks. With the exception of a transient fisherman, who now and then hauls up his boat out of the reach of the surf, on these harborless islands, and pitches his tent, made of his boat’s sail, for a few days of rest and refreshment, they have no inhabitants.
July 30th.—“Thick, cloudy weather, with incessant, and heavy rains; hauling in for the coast of Venezuela, near the entrance to the Gulf of Paria. So thick is the weather, that to ‘hold on to the land,’ I am obliged to run the coast within a mile, and this is close running on a coast not minutely surveyed.” So said my journal. Indeed the day in question was a memorable one, from its scenery, and surroundings. Few landscapes present so bold, and imposing a picture as this part of the South American coast. The Andes here rise abruptly out of the sea, to a great height. Our little craft running along their base, in the bluest and deepest of water, looked like a mere cockle-shell, or nautilus. Besides the torrents of rain, that were coming down upon our decks, and through which, at times, we could barely catch a glimpse of the majestic, and sombre-looking mountains, we were blinded by the most vivid flashes of lightning, simultaneously with which, the rolling and crashing of the thunder deafened our ears. I had stood on the banks of the Lake of Geneva, and witnessed a storm in the Alps, during which Byron’s celebrated lines occurred to me. They occurred to me more forcibly here, for literally—
“Far along
From peak to peak, the rattling crags among,
Leaps the live thunder! Not from one cloud,
But every mountain now had found a tongue,
And Jura answers, through her misty shroud,
Back to the joyous Alps, who call to her aloud!”
That word “joyous” was well chosen by the poet, for the mountains did indeed seem to rejoice in this grand display of nature. Of wind there was scarcely any—what little there was, was frequently off the land, and even blew in the direction opposite to that of the trade-wind. We were in the rainy season, along this coast, and all the vegetable kingdom was in full luxuriance. The cocoanut, and other palms, giving an Eastern aspect to the scenery, waved the greenest of feathery branches, and every shrub, and almost every tree rejoiced in its flower. It was delightful to inhale the fragrance, as the whirling aërial current brought us an occasional puff from the land.
On board the ship, we looked like so many half-drowned rats. The officer of the deck, trumpet in hand, was ensconced, to his ears, in his india-rubber pea-jacket, his long beard looking like a wet mop, and little rills of rain trickling down his neck, and shoulders, from his slouched “Sou’wester.” The midshipman of the watch had taken off his shoes, and rolled up his trousers, and was paddling about in the pools on deck, as well pleased as a young duck. And as for the old salt, he was in his element. There was plenty of fresh water to wash his clothes in, and accordingly the decks were filled with industrious washers, or rather scrubbers, each with his scrubbing-brush, and bit of soap, and a little pile of soiled duck frocks and trousers by his side.
The reader has been informed, that we were running along the coast, within a mile of it, to enable us to keep sight of the land. The object of this was to make the proper landfall for running into the Gulf of Paria, on which is situated the Port of Spain, in the island of Trinidad, to which we were bound. We opened the gulf as early as nine A. M., and soon afterward identified the three islands that form the Bocas del Drago, or dragon’s mouth. The scenery is remarkably bold and striking at the entrance of this gulf or bay. The islands rise to the height of mountains, in abrupt and sheer precipices, out of the now muddy waters—for the great Orinoco, traversing its thousands of miles of alluvial soil, disembogues near by. Indeed, we may be said to have been already within the delta of that great stream.
Memory was busy with me, as the Sumter passed through the Dragon’s Mouth. I had made my first cruise to this identical island of Trinidad, when a green midshipman in the Federal Navy. A few years before, the elder Commodore Perry—he of Lake Erie memory—had died of yellow fever, when on a visit, in one of the small schooners of his squadron, up the Orinoco. The
