The 8th of February, from the first dawn of day, Mocha came
in sight, now a ruined town, whose walls would fall at a gunshot,
yet which shelters here and there some verdant date-trees;
once an important city, containing six public markets,
and twenty-six mosques, and whose walls, defended by fourteen forts,
formed a girdle of two miles in circumference.
The Nautilus then approached the African shore, where the depth of the sea
was greater. There, between two waters clear as crystal, through the open
panels we were allowed to contemplate the beautiful bushes of brilliant
coral and large blocks of rock clothed with a splendid fur of green
variety of sites and landscapes along these sandbanks and algae and fuci.
What an indescribable spectacle, and what variety of sites and landscapes
along these sandbanks and volcanic islands which bound the Libyan coast!
But where these shrubs appeared in all their beauty was on the eastern coast,
which the Nautilus soon gained. It was on the coast of Tehama, for there
not only did this display of zoophytes flourish beneath the level of the sea,
but they also formed picturesque interlacings which unfolded themselves about
sixty feet above the surface, more capricious but less highly coloured than
those whose freshness was kept up by the vital power of the waters.
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