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I see the Deep’s untrampled floor With green and purple seaweeds strown; I see the waves upon the shore, Like light dissolved in star-showers, thrown: I sit upon the sands alone; The lightning of the noontide ocean Is flashing round me, and a tone Arises from its measured motion, How sweet! did any heart now share in my emotion?”
Pull up a bunch of the weed, and you find that it clings to the rocks and stones, but has no real roots. Seaweeds belong to a humble family in the world of plants, having no real roots, no flowers, and no real seeds. They can attach themselves to the stones or rocks.
This sward was of close texture, and soft to the feet, and rivalled the softest carpet woven by the hand of man. But whilst verdure was spread at our feet, it did not abandon our heads. A light network of marine plants, of that inexhaustible family of seaweeds of which more than two thousand kinds are known, grew on the surface of the water.
It had been made by shipwrecked mariners, long, long ago, and had floated about the sea until it had become of the sea, like a half-submerged floating island; brown and many-coloured seaweeds had attached themselves to it; strange creatures, half plant and half animal, grew on it; and little shell-fish and numberless slimy, creeping things of the sea made it their dwelling-place.
The place was a remote spot far up the shore. Katherine had taken off her shoes and stockings, tucked up her skirt, rolled her sleeves high above her dimpled elbows, and was deep in the absorbing process of fishing up seaweeds off a craggy headland. She looked anything but dignified while so employed, but under the circumstances dignity did not matter.
We had come to be so fond of this exercise, and to take such an interest in watching the formations of coral and the gambols of the many beautiful fish amongst the forest of red and green seaweeds, that we had become quite familiar with the appearance of the fish and the localities that they chiefly haunted. We had also become expert divers.
'Frank and Winnie, and little Bob Milford, and the seaweeds! The terrible past came upon my soul like an avalanche, and I leapt up and walked frantically towards my own waggon.
Hunt was in sympathy with the methods we ourselves were in the habit of using when we painted butterflies and seaweeds, placing perfectly pure pigments side by side, without any nonsense about chiaroscuro. This large, bright, comprehensive picture made a very deep impression upon me, not exactly as a work of art, but as a brilliant natural specimen.
Nothing seemed further from his intentions. When Katherine had picked up the aforesaid articles and turned homeward, he walked beside her, still discoursing on seaweeds as eloquently as if he were commonly accustomed to walking with barefooted young women. In spite of herself, Katherine couldn't help listening to him, for he managed to invest seaweeds with an absorbing interest.
We also saw many bunches of seaweeds in the latitude of 39 32 and, by judgment near, the meridian of the island Tristan d'Acunha: and then we had about 2 degrees 20 minutes east variation: which was now again decreasing as we ran to the eastward, till near the meridian of Ascension; where we found little or no variation: but from thence, as we ran farther to the east, our variation increased westerly.
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