Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
But we had to keep walking, and we went forward while overhead there scudded schools of Portuguese men-of-war that let their ultramarine tentacles drift in their wakes, medusas whose milky white or dainty pink parasols were festooned with azure tassels and shaded us from the sun's rays, plus jellyfish of the species Pelagia panopyra that, in the dark, would have strewn our path with phosphorescent glimmers!
Dr Cuff pointed out many to me; and one of the passengers, a clergyman, when he found that I took a deep interest in such matters, showed me many others. Just before entering the trade-wind region we observed several whales sporting round the ship. Directly afterwards we found ourselves in a shoal of medusas or jellyfish.
We observed during the night, that, of three species of medusas which we collected, none yielded any light but at the moment of a very slight shock.
I likewise marveled at the numerous medusas, including the most beautiful of their breed, the compass jellyfish, unique to the Falkland seas. Some of these jellyfish were shaped like very smooth, semispheric parasols with russet stripes and fringes of twelve neat festoons. Others looked like upside-down baskets from which wide leaves and long red twigs were gracefully trailing.
Great masses of green, slimy seaweed, shells, water-soaked driftwood, and thousands of medusas, which had been thrown up by the storm, lay strewn in piles along the beach; but we dashed through and over them at a mad gallop, never drawing rein for an instant except to pick our way among enormous masses of rock, which in some places had caved away from the summit of the cliff and blocked up the beach with grey barnacle-encrusted fragments as large as freight-cars.
The sun rose higher; it burnt above, it burnt from the expanse of waters, myriads of jelly-like medusas filled the river; it was as though the sun's rays had changed the whole sea into a heaving world of animal life; I had never before seen anything like it. In the Languedoc canal we had all to get into a large boat which had been constructed more for goods than for passengers.
We entered on a zone where the whole sea was covered with a prodigious quantity of medusas. The vessel was almost becalmed, but the mollusca were borne towards the south-east, with a rapidity four times greater than the current. Their passage lasted near three quarters of an hour. We then perceived but a few scattered individuals, following the crowd at a distance as if tired with their journey.
Huge medusas, exquisitely tinted, floated on the water like spread parasols. During the night, or rather what ought to have been the night of the 19th-20th, my sleep was disturbed by a strange dream. Yes! there could be no doubt but that it was only a dream!
We know that the mollusca haunt banks; and if the eight rocks, near the surface, which captain Vobonne mentions having seen in 1732, to the north of Porto Santo, really exist, we may suppose that this innumerable quantity of medusas had been thence detached; for we were but 28 leagues from the reef. It is known by its brownish-yellow colour, and by its tentacula, which are longer than the body.
Poor dwarf, unlike Mallare he has not learned that suffering is an illusion, that couches and Medusas are illusions. Unlike Mallare there is no smile hanging its star above him. "Sleep comes. A forgotten world babbles with shadows outside my windows. It is time to say goodnight to my friend, the lodge brother. Turn your tears to the cold moon, my friend. Mallare goes away.
Word Of The Day