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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.
I walked on slowly, looking inland towards the white fields stretching away endlessly into the distance till the blue of the sky seems to come down and mingle with the blue shadows in the snow. Beneath my feet glimmered sometimes the green glass-like surface of smooth ice, at others the thin crisp covering of drifted snow crackled at every step.
The conversation between the two friends, which was of a desultory and discursive character, ebbed and flowed in unison with the interest of the speakers, and was punctuated with many spells of silence while the two gazed dreamily out across the glass-like surface of the lagoon, indistinguishable now in the velvet blackness, save when a faint flicker of sheet lightning momentarily illuminated it.
No sail was in sight there had been none nothing could be seen of ship or sail over the wide circle of the ocean nothing moved upon the glass-like face of that vast mirror. A false alarm, entirely without foundation. Why the man had uttered it was soon explained. The wild expressions that were pouring from his lips, with the grotesque gestures he was making with his arms proved that he was mad!
He called up the pain he suffered to vindicate him; and it was really an agony of a man torn to pieces. 'I have done the best. This dogged and stupid piece of speech was pitiable to hear from Nevil Beauchamp. 'You think so? said she; and her glass-like voice rang a tremour in its mildness that swelled through him on the plain submissive note, which was more assent than question.
She left him on the terrace, and walked sorrowfully away to the house which could never be the same again. Fitz watched her slight young form disappear through an open doorway, and then he became lost in the contemplation of the distant sea, lying still and glass-like in the moonlight.
These places are teeming with blossoms, pink lilies, bearing broad, floating, heart-shaped leaves whose roots are securely anchored to the bottom. Some of the plants resting so serenely on the glass-like surface have short, delicate white roots, and receive their nutriment only from the air and water, not coming in contact with the earth at all.
It would not, for instance, at first occur to any one that the transparency of the Medusae, or jelly-fish, is of the highest service to them as a protection; but when we are reminded by Haeckel that not only the Medusae, but many floating Mollusca, crustaceans, and even small oceanic fishes partake of this same glass-like appearance, often accompanied by prismatic colours, we can hardly doubt that they thus escape the notice of pelagic birds and other enemies.
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.
When there is unusual commotion in Kilauea myriads of thread-like filaments float in the air and fall upon the cliffs, making deposits much resembling matted hair. A single filament over fifteen inches long was picked up on a Hilo veranda, having sailed in the air a distance of fifty miles. This is the famous Pele's Hair, being the glass-like product of volcanic fires.
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