Category: Ocean

After breakfast we rowed to the lighthouse, and, arriving under the columns, stepped from our boat on to a perpendicular ladder somewhat steep to climb, which brought us to a rough flooring. From this point there was a spiral staircase, by which we reached the rooms of the lighthouse-keeper. He was glad enough to see us, for he and his two assistants live a lonely life out on the reef, with no soul to speak to except each other, and nothing to do but to trim and feed the lamp on which so many lives depend, and watch the sails go by. He was an old man, who had led a seafaring life himself, and he told us that forty years ago he was wrecked on the very spot where Carysfort Light now ‘stands. I dare say that sometimes, when he lights up his huge lantern at dusk, and sets the lamp revolving within the great glass lenses which multiply its brilliancy a hundred-fold, he remembers the night when, if such a glowing eye had shone upon his track, he would have been saved from great disaster and loss.

This was not the only lighthouse we had visited on our cruise. A few weeks before we had stopped at one which was built on a rock in the ocean, so barren that Carysfort itself, with no land at all about it, seemed to me cheerful in comparison. I mention it because I think you will be surprised to hear that on this desolate rock there lived a family of children with their father and mother. Do you not think it must be a sad life? And yet they looked bright and happy, though they never have any other children to come and play with them, never see a green field or a flower, and never know what it is to run and play at will as children do on land, because the rock is so small, and is pierced with so many holes and caverns, that their parents fear to let them go about alone. I wished I had had some playthings, some pretty books or pictures, for them. But as it was, instead of my giving them anything, they loaded me with presents, bringing me, in a shy, affectionate way, all the pretty shells and stones which are their substitutes for playthings, and insisting upon my accepting them. But let us go back to Carysfort. I am forgetting the subject of our talk in telling you about those solitary little people anchored so far away from all your amusements and pleasures.

After we had talked with the lighthouse-keeper for a while, he invited us to step out upon a sort of ledge or balcony which runs around his rooms on the outside, and is protected by a railing. From this perch we looked down into the sea, and I want you to look down with me. If you do not, I am afraid you will hardly believe what I tell you.

As far as the eye could reach, the coral field stretched out around the lighthouse, and so transparent was the water, that we saw the ocean bottom as we might have seen a garden spread out beneath us. This comparison may, however, mislead you, and I think I have perhaps misled you already, when in a former chapter I compared the appearance of a growing coral reef to a shrubbery of waving, many-colored plants. When I wrote that I had never seen, and hardly expected to see, a coral reef, and I described its appearance as I had understood it from the descriptions of others. But Nature is not poor in invention. She does not simply repeat the grace and loveliness of her fields when she spreads her ocean floor with a beauty all its own. And though I confess that there is something in the branching, leaf-like growth of the corals, as well as in their motion and color, which reminds one of plants, yet I think there is a glory of the sea as there is a glory of the land, and they are not the same.

The coral field consisted, in a great degree, of what are called leaf-corals (Madrepora palmata). They often, though not always, grow in spirals, their broad, flat branches rising tier upon tier, one above the other. Looking down upon them, I understood where the animals living upon the reef make their homes and find a shelter. Between the almost level floors of these expansions, which often stretch for many yards in circumference on one single stock, there are hundreds of protected recesses, little holes and shady nooks and corners, which seem, I dare say, like large caves to the small animals which inhabit them.

Numbers of fishes were playing among these spreading branches. Darting, shooting, winding in and out between the corals, seen one moment, hidden the next, chasing one another as if in a game of hide-and-seek, or following in shoals of twenty or thirty, as if bound on some special errand, they all seemed as busy and as happy as birds in a wood. Most of them were very brilliant in color. In some, the whole body was of the most vivid blue, others were blue and black, others, again, red and green, others black banded with yellow, and one, the most beautiful of all, was a bright canary color on the lower side, and dark violet above. Now and then some large fish, a garupa [2] or a barracuda, or even a shark, would pass by, and then all the smaller fry scattered, hiding themselves under the coral, and were seen no more till their enemy was out of sight.

We passed a couple of hours in the lighthouse, watching this strange and beautiful spectacle. We then returned to the ship for lunch, but started again in boats in the afternoon, for the purpose of floating over the whole expanse of the reef, and collecting coral. This was, if possible, more interesting, for, being almost on a level with the water, we could see every object beneath it with even greater distinctness than from the lighthouse, though at that height we had, of course, a more extensive view.

I have mentioned especially the leaf-coral, because that was the most conspicuous at first sight; but there were many heads of brain-coral, or Mæandrina, of Astræa, commonly called Star Coral, and of Porites, ranging in size from little tufts not bigger than your fist to enormous masses from six to ten feet in diameter. There were many also of the more delicate branching kinds, known as finger-corals, and great numbers of the so-called sea-fans. These latter resemble plants so much, that in seeing them you cease to wonder at the frequent comparison of coral-beds to gardens or shrubbery. The broad expansions of the leaf-coral spread horizontally, and are perfectly rigid and motionless, the soft parts of the animals composing the mass being very small in comparison to the solid portions of which the whole structure is built. The fan-corals, on the contrary, are elastic and flexible. They stand upon the ocean bottom on a sort of root, or at least upon a solid base which resembles a root, and their spreading leaves rise lightly in the water and wave with its motion as if stirred by the wind. They are of many colors, — various shades of brown, green, and purple, the latter being especially predominant. Mingled as they often are with a kind of vegetable coral called coralline, resembling sea-weed, and with the bright red, purple, or orange-colored sponges which abound along the Florida coast, you may well be reminded, when looking down upon them, of a brilliant flower-bed.

We could not have had a better day for our excursion than the one we had chosen. It happened to be a season of spring tides, so that the ebb tide was remarkably low. In some places large masses of coral were left exposed, and indeed there were portions of the reef over which one might walk, not dry shod certainly, but springing from one coral stock to another. Other portions were still covered, even at the lowest tide, by six or eight feet or even three or four fathoms of water. I am sure that all the boys who read this would gladly have shared in the fun of that afternoon. We had three or four boats, and the greater part of the ship’s company were in them. All had come dressed for aquatic adventures, and soon there was scarcely a man left in the boats. In every variety of rough and picturesque costume, they were stalking about on the reef, — sometimes wading up to their waists or their shoulders, sometimes swimming in the deeper places, sometimes diving after a desirable specimen. Armed with boat-hooks, crow-bars, logs of wood, or whatever else they could lay their hands upon, all were engaged in dislodging the more solid and heavier masses, or in breaking off the delicate fans and the finger-corals. It was a play-day for all. I doubt if ever before the reef had resounded to such gayety, — the shouts and laughter of the men echoing on every side as they plunged and tumbled about in the water. Now and then the mirth was varied by cries of another kind, when some one, by mistake, laid hold of the sharp spines of a sea urchin, or got a sting from the so-called sea-worm. But these incidents were not numerous, and, after all, raised a laugh in the end.

At last, when all were fairly tired out with work and play, we returned to the vessel, rowing back in the sunset over a sea so calm that no ripple, except those made by our oars, broke its surface. Such was our day at Carysfort Reef, and if I have told my story well, I think you will admit that it was one to be pleasantly remembered. In my next article I shall tell you something of the different kinds of coral when alive, as I saw them during our cruise, and explain the reefs and keys of Florida more at length.