the sea to Bushby in the track of the departed gypsies.
In the far distance I could trace the smoke of their
moving fires, and the gleam of an oar blade as it caught
the sun. Skate were flapping about in the sea, and a
shoal of small fish leaped and plunged, pursuing and
pursued, the war of nature incessant under the smiling
surface of life. The Sisters, all blue and green now,
lay strung in a line upon the western sea, and O
Mimosa San was fast fading out of sight. The “ Father
and Son,” a solemn couple, greeted us on the south. I
hailed the Chinaman as we came up to him, and he sent
off a present of green-snail shells, and a polite message
to say that the Salon would rendezvous in his neighbourhood
in the evening after the day’s work.
The green-snail shell is a beautiful object, deep sea-
green without, white and iridescent within. All the
beauty of the sunset is by some subtle miracle of nature
caught and imprisoned in the mould of this deep-sea
dweller. And so, as we went on, I came upon the
Salon, in the green water, under a rocky coast. There
were several boats, and from one a man with a Burman
air about him, a very merry fellow, signalled to us to
come up, that he might look upon us. In the boats
before me there were men and women, children arid
boys ; but the young unmarried girls must have hidden
themselves away, for I could see none. The children
were of a fiurer complexion than their parents, and all
but the very youngest were at work, with oar or punting
pole. The most attractive child of all was a little girl
on the verge of womanhood, bedecked with beads, and
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