"The mainland is flanked throughout nearly its entire extent by a belt of islands, of which the majority are sea-girt mountains. Of course, throughout this extended coast-line there are many islands of many different phases,--some of them mere rocks, to which the kelps cling for dear life, like stranded sailors in a storm; while others are gently rounded mounds, wooded with fir; and others, still, precipitous cliffs standing breast deep in the waves. Most aptly has this wave-washed region been termed an archipelago of mountains and land-locked seas. Steaming through the labyrinths of straits and channels which seem to have no outlets; straining the neck to scan the tops of snow-capped peaks which rise abruptly from the basin where you ride at anchor; watching the gambols of great whales, thresher-sharks and herds of sea-lions, which seem as if penned up in an aquarium, so completely are they enclosed by the shadowy hills,--one seems, indeed, in a new creation, and watches the strange forms around him with an intensity of interest which almost amounts to awe. "In this weird region of bottomless depths, there are no sand beaches or gravelly shores. All the margins of mainland and islands drop down plump into inky fathoms of water, and the fall of the tide only exposes the rank yellow weeds which cling to the damp crags and slippery rocks, and the mussels and barnacles which crackle and hiss when the lapping waves recede. * * * * * When the tide sets in, great rafts of algae, with stems fifty feet long, career along the surface; millions of jelly-fish and anemones crowded as closely as the stars in the firmament; great air-bulbs, with streamers floating like the long hair of female corpses; schools of porpoises and fin-back whale rolling and plunging headlong through the boiling foam; all sorts of marine and Mediterranean fauna pour in a ceaseless surge, like an irresistible army. Hosts of gulls scream overhead, or whiten the ledges, where they squat content or run about feeding.