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Updated: May 4, 2025
If we draw nearer, this shore is seen to be entirely covered in places with little snails, that, left by the tide, are forging through the mud to regain the water, and the sunlight striking on them is reflected by the glass-like secretion with which they are covered, producing the curious effect noticed.
In the smoother spaces, trout splashed; the reflections of the hills showed in the great expanse as the light wind lessened, allowing the surface to become glass-like, revealing also the twisted roots and dead branches of trees long inundated in forming the big basin of water.
These jelly-fish are budded and thrown off by them, as glass-like swimming bells, which lead an independent life, seize prey, nourish themselves, and grow to a size varying from that of a sixpence to that of a cart-wheel. These "bells" are commonly known as "jelly-fish." They discharge thousands of egg-cells into the sea and fertilise them with sperms!
When the blast is directed against them they at first form a cake of some compactness, probably in consequence of the fusion of impurities they contain. The mass withstands for a very long time the blast without further fusion; but a slow carrying off, or burning, occurs, and, finally, a small quantity of a glass-like residue is left, which, I suppose, is melted alumina.
About the middle of the next night the storm began to abate, and when morning came we found ourselves enveloped in a thick fog, while the ocean, though still heaving in slow undulations, gradually assumed a glass-like surface of leaden hue. We, having borne up, stood to the northward in search of the squadron. The captain ordered a bright look-out to be kept. "Marry! a bright look-out.
Two birds in cages were singing loudly; the floor was waxed to a glass-like polish; nothing could have been whiter than the marble of the tables except the napkins laid over them.
How, for instance; they always chose the strongest and handsomest man in their nation for their king, and obeyed him unconditionally: how many of them reached the age of 120 years, and some even passed it: how they ate nothing but boiled flesh, drank new milk and washed in a spring the waters of which had the scent of violets, gave a remarkable lustre to their skins, and were so light that wood could not swim in them: how their captives wore golden fetters, because other metals were rare and dear in their country; and lastly, how they covered the bodies of the dead with plaster or stucco, over which a coating of some glass-like material was poured, and kept the pillars thus formed one year in their houses, during which time sacrifices were offered them, and at the year's end they were placed in rows around the town.
With all her sheets flattened-in she came-to until she was looking up within three points of the wind, careening to her bearings and sweeping as rapidly and almost as noiselessly as a wreath of mist driving to leeward, the only sound she made being a soft hissing at her cutwater as her sharp bow clove the ripples and ploughed up a glass-like sheet of water on either side of it.
It is pleasant, it is profoundly enjoyable, to sit on the margin of the sea during the dead calm that not unfrequently succeeds a wild storm, and watch the gentle undulations of the glass-like surface, which the very gulls seem to be disinclined to ruffle with their wings as they descend to hover above their own reflected images.
I apologised to those whom we had kept out of their berths; but they were very civil, and replied that they had slept on sofas, and that we evidently required all the rest we could obtain. On going on deck we found that the calm still continued, and the ship lay on the glass-like surface, her sails idly hanging down against the masts.
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