Letters from the South - 1837 Author:Thomas Campbell Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: LETTER XVIII. French African Company—Coral—Ancient opinions respecting it—Natural History of Coral—Period of the Coral Fishery in the Mediterranean—Mode ... more »of fishing it up—Remarks of Spallanzani—Sicilian Coral Fishers —History of the French Coral Fishery—Estimated revenue that might he derived from its cultivation— Supply from the Red Sea—Coral much esteemed among the Orientals—Formation of Coral Reefs— Remarkahle properties of the Coral Insect. More than a century before the conquest of Algiers and down to a comparatively recent period, the French had an African Company, who, with factories at different places on the coast, rented from the Alge- rine government a monopoly for the exportation of wool and grain, as well as for the fishery of coral which was principally conducted at Bona. In the voyage thither, I sometimes amusedmyself with building castles, not in the air, but under water. I am a great lover of submarine prospects. Often in my boyhood, when the day has been bright and the sea transparent, I have sat by the hour on a Highland rock admiring the golden sands, the emerald weeds, and the silver shells at the bottom of the bay beneath, till, dreaming about the grottoes of the Nereids, I would not have exchanged my pleasure for that of a connoisseur poring over a landscape by Claude, or Poussin. Enchanting Nature ! thy beauty is not only in heaven and earth, but in the waters under our feet. How magnificent a medium of vision is the pellucid sea! Is it not like poetry, that embellishes every object we contemplate ? On the way to Bona, I recalled old and pleasing recollections of voyagers who describe the splendour of coral groves, particularly as they are seen on the shores of the Red Sea when its water is still; and though I was not going so far as the Red...« less