"the Multitudinous Seas."

How few thcrc are who reahze that the ocean is aught elso than a raging mass of woltering waves lashed by storms, to be regarded only with dread, and avoided with aversión ! How many Tain from it but one or two one-sided impressions ! To one the sea is always blue ; somehow th.at idea early fixed itsclf in his mind, and he has never cared to observe further, and revise a first partial impression. To another it always looks green. Nothing more fairly indicates the cxceedingly limitcd habita of observation of the average mind in matters out of its beat than the excessively meager notions which many have of the sea, even after repeated familiarity with it, as in the case of those who cannot picad the' excuse of seasickness for their ignorancc. How few there are who fully appreeiato the matchless suggestiveness of that Homeric passage - " The innumerable smiles of the numy-voiccd sea!" That line only touches on the countless aspects of ocean, and yet it is the finest definitiou of the soa in the wholc range of literature. xVbout Madeira the sca when over ten fathonis is like inolton turquois, lovely beyond deseription, not only in the seaoaves, as in the famous Blue Grotto of Capri, but outsido. The iish swimming iu it seem to be of transparent blue, and the keel of a ship, seen with perfect distinctness, is like a solid mass of translucent cobalt. The color of the water in the trópica scems to be shared also by the fish of those regions. The blue-fish, ]uite different from the fish of that name on the New England. coast, looks as if carved out of ultramarine tojjchéd with burïied sienna in parta, and the mouth fringed with carnation-tintcd ooraL The parrot-fish is of a scarlet as vivid iis (luit of the birds in the forests of the neighboring shores ; the mallet is brilliant brown and gold. In northern waters, on the contrary, wc have the cod ciad in quaker-gray, and the haddock, which still bears on its head the mark of St. Peter's holy thumb when he squeczed a piecc of silver out of its mouth, wears a livery the color of the roaring .surges whioh overwhelni imr fishermen on the Georges and the Grand Banks. The lied sea is so called for a certain tawny tinge of its waters as well as for the red coral on its coast, but why the Black soa should have that epithet it is difficult to say, unless on account of the scowling, thunderous appearance it presents in winter, when it is swept by disastrous storms. The sea on tlie southern coast of England is a peculiar light gray-green caused by the chiilk-elifl's which are being constantly eroded and washed away by the ocean-billows. A very striking instance of water colored in this way is scon in Northumbcrland strait, Gulf of St. Lawrence, especially after a storm. The soft, reddish shores of Prince Edvard's island aro caten away and absorbed by the sea, which thus assumes a rich coffee-color, very vivid, and, when glistening in the sun, and tinged hcre and thcre with reflections of the blue overhead, extraordinarily rich in tone, and strongly resembling polished syenite. It is well known that the Amazon dyes the sea for hundred of miles beyond the land with the ochretinted silt it washes down from the pampas and the far-off mountains of Peru. The warmth of the water in tropical latitudes secnis to have the same effect on the monsters of the deep that the climate has on the temperament of man. The barracuda is savage and aggressive as a tiger, and the cruel voracity of the King of the Cannibal islands is quite eclipsed by the horrible, treacherous, stealthy nature of that sea-pirate, the man-eating shark. It is stated, and from what I have heard I am inclined to think it is truc, that the shark prefers white men to negroes, and will only attack and eat the latter on rare occasions. An English f rigate's crew on the edge of the Bahama bank killed sixty of these monsters in one day's sport a few days ago, so numeróos are they in those waters. This might have been a mcans taken by the British Government to revengo itself, as on soimi savage tribe, regardless of diplomatic remonstrances and the ciiurtesy of nations, for the liberty taken by the sharks with the crew of an English ship-of-war some years oarlier. The Magpie schooncr was cruising off Cuba for piratas when she was strack by an " ox-eye" squall - a wind coming without other warning than a smafl round cloud in a clear sky, rushingwith the rapidity of a cannon-ball. 8Ee was over in an instant, and, to makc a long story short, the whole crew but two were devoured by a school of sharks which were lying in wait. Gliding in among the horror-stricken crowd of seamen, they played with them for a while as a cat does with her prey. Bui the íh'sfc taste of blood wan like alcohol to a drunkard, and in a few momenta only two of the crew survived in v boat which bad Hoated off i'rom the Vessel as she went down. After they liad been in the boat sevoval days, pftrohêd, tarvod, and roasted by tho tropio sun, i Vuig hovc in sight, slowly passing two miles away witli n very bgnt moraing air jnst tílling tho sails. As she did not secm to seo tlie boat, one of the men jivmped into the water and swani off to her. IIo was followcd by two sharks, which kopt hini company the whole of tliat long, awfnl swim. But he scared (hom off by flapping his jacket - the shark is a great coward. Just as hc was about to give up the race in despair, the man at the wheol looked over the rail and saw him. A boat was lowered, and he and his shipmate werc saved. Nothing one soes at sea so sends an involuntary shuddcr throngh him as to see the edge of the dorsal fin of a shark floating like an upright spar on the surface of the water. You know at once that mischief is lurking there. Another terror of the deep is the many-arr.ied prodigy called octopus, devil-fish, cuttlc-fish, sepia, or sqnid, but th last mane is generally applied to the smaller species, common in tho Mediterranean, wherc it is dried and eaten. In the China seas sepia for painting is extracted from it; but the larger kind, called by old writers the kraken, has only reccntly come into prominence as a crodible reality. Hakluyt's " t ages" contain thrilling illustrations of tho kraken reaching vip lts long aims into the rigging of sliips, pulling them over or quietly hclping itself to the terror-stricken crew ; but these havo been considered fabulous representations, and Victor Hugo's description of the wonderful devil-fish in " The Toilers of the Sea" lias been ed chiefly as an example of the cxhaustless fecundity of tliat writer's imagination rather than an actual creature. But within three or four years too many specimens of the cuttle-fish have been eiicountered, with a Spread of ïhirty to sixty feet to the. arms, to make this creature any longer the subject of legitímate liuighter, especially as it has been found to have a spidor-like way of creeping on its victim and drawing it j down to its den at the bottom of the sea, as in the case of the poor Indian jirl recently caught in the deadly einarace of an octopus near Vancouver's island. I doubt not similar certainty will be reachcd regarding tho vcxed question about sca-serpents. There is nothing more absurd thañ the incredulous lovity of the popular miad concorning this mysterious serpent. What is there more impossiblo about a largo water-snake j han a largo fish? There are small fishes and largo fishes, small wfttetsnakes, and why nofc largo ones ? What is an eelbutasea-serpent? and are there not water-snakes ie cvery brook? Pcrliaps the largo sca-serpent is a eomparatively ncw creation, cvolved on the Darwinian theory; porhaps, liko tho whale, it changes its habitat, and has but reccntly becomc common in northern waters ; or, as has been suggested, perliaps it is a deep-sea creature frightcned to the surface by some great submarino convulsión. The witnesses to this monster have been so many and of so good a character for credibility that the laugh should really be against those who do not belicvc in tho existence of tho seaserpent. There is a kind of sca-snako scen sometimos which is not revealed to thosc who voyagc in steamers ; many aro tho ocean-phenomena which they lose, soon only by those who go in sailingship.s, for the steamer frightens away many sea wonders. Thero are days in mid-ocean - and one need not go to the doldrums or hoisc-latitudes to find them - when day after diiy, week after week, the breezes are aslecp, and the spirits of the storm have gone bclow to sport with the nereids, and Neptune and Amphitrito holding festal times in the sea-green caves of ocean, it seenis as ifthere was nothing left but sea and sky, and, insphered between tliem, one solitary shi] gazing at its oivn shadow, and held motionlcss, as if paralyzed there forover on an enclianted sea, whilo the sun risos and sets in a cloudlcss sky, reflectcd on the oily surface of the sea as on a mirror of buruished gold. At night the moon, yellow and full, rises in the west, like an imago of the sun, but throws no reflcction from the horizon on the water, so absolutcly smooth and glassy is the sea. Only, as one looks over thesideof the shipiti that appaHing and seemingly-eternal silence of the illimifcable ocean, he seos three or four round balls of silver cerily quiveringby the ship, when the moon is at its zenith, which look as if they were magie balls tosscd up from the depths below by unseen tricksy sprites of the sea. Perchance there is another ship rloating in company miles away, and gradually, by an agency that scems supernatural, she draws gradually nearer, although tliere is never a breath of air stirring. But this is explained from the simple fact that there are always unseen currents moving, and one ship will bc more or less aff'ected than another by them, according to its draught or weight. It is at such a time that objects float by which one would never havo suspected to exist in the sea - not only nautili and lovely Portuguesc men-of-war, and 'jellyfish, fringed with long crimson-andpurplo hair, but algso of a fairy-like grace that almost exceeds belief, and serpents six to eight feet long, transparent as if made of elastic glass, of a delicately-modulated pearly gray, striped and spotted, with gem-like pointe of green, searlet and blue. It is like a revelation of an unseen world ; and so it is, for the sea, much as it has been cxplored, is yet, like the human brain, full of wonders and mysteries yet unrevealed, hidden far, far down where no human oye has yet penetrated. From time to time a fresh discovery is made, as in the case of the fish brought up by the Challenger exploring expedition oft' the coast of Portugal - a fi.sh at the bottom of the sea, and kept together by the pressure of the water ; when brought to the surface, it exploded to atome. One of the finost cffects at sea is mirage, which is confined to no part of the ocean, although the conditions which produce it do not always seem thoroughly explained by saying that it is doe to refraction. To see the shore raised above the water, and hovering mysteriously in the air, refieeted in another sea of its own, is a sight that the most threadbarc familiarity can never make less wonderful. Tho Mediterranean abounds in the effects of mirage ; it is an every-day sight to see the Sierra Nevada mountains on the coast of Spain suspended severa! degrees above the blue waters of the sea. But mirage is also ccmmim on our coast, and espceially in Jjöng Mand sound in moist, foggy tveathér. Tlio most singular forra of tli is phenomeüön is whon shipnare seen iloating in the air. A roinarkablo instanoe of tliis is réláted of a ship that, during tlio colonial cinys, wasexpected from England. Ou a Munday aftej-noon, aftcr a violent storm, she was sëéil floating in the air, cvcry spar representen soclearlv that theté Was no question of the identity of the vesscl thus painted in the elouds; bút that was the last that was ever seen of the ill-fated ship. One of the surest indieations of a storm i.s what sailors eall Cape Flyaway ; that is, a cloud or elouds whieh look so like land as to decerye " tlie very eleet" themselves. More or less coinnion in all paris of the sea, we again fiiïd that this phenomenon is cspecially eommon in the Azores; and tliis has probably been one reason why the old navigators, who eruised about these waters in olden times, were eontinually sHtecovering land, from whieh they vktte blown away by a storm, and werc afterward unable to iind it again, for the very good reason that " he needs mnst have opties keen who sees what is not to be seen." Another forcrunner of a storm is the water-siiout, whieh is onc of the most impressive and awe-inspiring pighte fit sea. The oxplanation of its being is simple enough. A whirlwind or gyrating cnrrent of air scizes the water as on land it snatehes up sand and dust, and whirls it up to the clouds, whieh tlnts receive some of the moisturc of whieh thcy are composed. I saw a cnrious illustration of this once wlicn sailing in a boat near the shorc, the wind being nor'-northwest, and the wcather being very dry. I observed a thread-like coW nnin of dust on the land skurrying toward the water - it was a small whirlwind ; no sooner did it touch the water that the column turned as if by magie into water, coming with great rapidity toward the boat. I at once luffed and let go the sheet, and the water-spout passed within two or three yai"ds off, and was perhaps three to four inches in diameter. Bnt a real, live water-spout, that mcans mischief, is a sublime object, to be regarded with just apprehension by all sailors, for they are sometimos sufnciently large and violent to founder a ship. A cannon-ball brought to be'ar on one will, however, sometimes causo it to break. When there are several in a row, as I havo repeatedly seen them in the Black sea, where they are especially eommon, they look like a colonnade of majestic pillars supp.orting the sky. I nevcr shall forgot a magnificent waterspout that ncarly overwhelmed us ono gloomy twilight in the Gulf stream. It was blowing very i'resh about dusk, when the Captain came out to take another look bcfore suppcr. The man at the wheel was looking into the binnaele, and no onc elso had seen a huge waterspout, whieh the Captain perecived as soon as he put his head above the companionway. It was advancing with great volocity directly on a line with the ship and was alarmingly near. The Captain sprung to the wheel, and, pushing the helmsman asido, put the helm down and kept away several points, and the water-spout passed just astern ; another minute of delay and the brave little bark would have carricd her crew to Davy Jones. The Gulf stream, whether off Hatteras or in the Roaring Fortics, is probably the most eaprioious, treacherous, and phenomenal part of the Atlantic, the most trying to encounter, excepting possibly some of the regions in the vieinity of daugerous coasts. Nowhero else are the phosphorescent effects of the sea so di.stinet and bcautifiil, so ftill of the oolora red, blue and green. It is not infrequent, especially near the Florida banks. to see the phospbonis rushing past the ship in a band of light so brilliant that one eau easily read the time on his watchonthc darkest nights, while the rudder is bathcd in masses of prismatic flame, as the sparks meet and dash together in the ship's wak(!. In the North Atlantic, when the wave-erests flash like torchos and emit an electric vapor that kindies the vast expanse of ocean with mysterious light, heavy weather may bo expectcd within twentyfour hours. It is very remarkable how many of the glories and att ractivo efl'octs of the sea are like batometrie foreoats of the weather. The difl'ercnt tints of green in the sky at sunset, for example, indícate unerringly calms or storms, according to the tint. The Gulf stream is noted for its electrieal iihenomena. These are always far more conmion as a rule at sea than on land, and nojthing can be more appaThng than the periodical eléctrica! storms of the trppics, especially in the Iii(üan ocean with the chango of the monsoon, or equinoctial hurricanes of those latitudes. But for a continuous, chronic, inexhaustiblc supply of fireworks, the Gulf stream has no rival. It brings them forth on the slightest occasion, and it is doubtful .if ever a ship crossed the fierec-tompered current without seeing lightning. Tliis is easily aecounted for : the prevailing winds of the North Atlantic are southwest and northwest, except certain local winds near the English channel, and the northeast trades blowing from Cape Finisterre to the Cape de Verds. When the southwest wind has been blowing a while it has a strong inclination to shift into the northwest, and the longer it blows the more it wants to get around, and the more sudden and violent is the ehange when it comes. Now, the meeting of the warm current of southwest air with the cooler air from the northwest resulta in a discharge of electricity ; and, although sometimes lightning is seen in the soiithwest for many hours before the wind changos, yet, when' it does shift, it always does so with a tremendous rain and vivid lightning, often attended by what ace called corpoa santos, or St. Elmo's candles, electric lights whieh without any warning are" seen suddenly perched on the end of cvery spar, producing a most mysterious and beautiful effect. They do not always come in heavy weather, although generally seen at such a time, and many seamen eonsider it a bad omen to have ono shine on a man's face when he is aloft; but this superstition is wearing away. Another electric phenomenon at sea is a round ball the size of a full moon, but brightcr and redder, passing slowly from one cloud to another, sometimes succeeded by a terrifie explosión of thunder. One is surprised that ships are not oftener sunk by lightning, but, although the bolts sometimes full in quick succession directly avomid the vessel, they are generally attracted by the water. The icebergs which come down from the North polo and lie in wait for vessels crossing their path also iind thcir grave in tho Gulf tstrcam. Northward and castward runs this fierce currcnt, yet bolow it is n slealthy polar curren t gliding over southward, and the miglity berg, whoso bottom reaches many fatlioms down, is soized by the lowcr current and borne against the Gulf stream, until the heat of the upper eunent OtéltÈ and disintegrates it, and allows it 110 Jonger to be a moñaco to the mariner ft siren indeed, the very embodimentof poetry and splendor, but troucherous and remorseless as a fiend. Sev(-r;il timos have I seen icebergs at sea, geiieraUy looming suddenly, startling and ghost-liJio, out of a dank fog, but once robed in imperial magnifieence. Jt was the 4th of July, and tlie sky was itliout a c.loud, but the air was cold and keen is winter, and we knew wliat it mcaut. As tlie Suri aróse the horizon was studded with glittering points Hke the serried spcars of a great host ; here and tlie.re a lofticr mass flashed baek the rays of the sim from pomo berg towerij)g aboye the fleld-iiiè. There was nothing to bc done but to keep on our eoursc, for wc were nearly surrQunded by the ice ; but wc had a íoadiug wind, a good top-gallant brceze, and feit our way without much diffieulty through the broad chanjiels. What lovely pale greens and blues were revealed in the caverna of the immense, cathedral-like icebergs into which the waves brote with a far-off, ecrie boom, and how exquiaite was the róscate blush whieh the icy pinnaeles assumed when kissed by the setting sun ! The full moon arose soon after and shone on the silvery bas-i tions and towers of an iceberg scarcely half a mile from ns, wliich was not less than 400 feet abovc tlie sea and nearly four timos the height of our masts. Ncxt morning the polar fleot had disiippearod in the southern board, and, on the wholo, we wero not sorry to part company with it.