Note 25 — THE GREEN HAND. A "SHORT YARN." A WIND-UP.

The description of this peculiar phenomenon of the Indian Ocean, as given by Captain Collins, surprised us as much as the reality seems to have done him. However, on consulting a seafaring old gentleman of much experience in all parts of the world, we are informed that such an appearance is periodically to be met with for some distance between the Laccadive and Maldive islands, as he had reason to know. The old Dutch Captain Stavorinus also furnishes an account substantially similar, having particularly attended to the cause of it in his voyage to the East Indies: it reaches also to some of the south-eastern islands at a great distance from India, near Java—or at all events appears there. In the Atlantic, Humboldt says there is a part of the sea always milky, although very deep, in about 57º W. longitude, and the parallel of the island of Dominica. Of the same nature, probably, are the immense olive-green spaces and stripes seen in blue water by Captain Scoresby and others, toward the ice of the north polar regions.

The pale sea alluded to is supposed either to move from the shores of Arabia Felix, and the gulfs in that coast, or, by some, to arise from sulphureous marine exhalations—appearing to rot the bottoms of vessels, and to frighten the fish. Both at the Laccadives and near Java it is seen twice a-year, often with a heavy rolling of the sea and bad weather. The first time, at the new moon in June, it is called by the Dutch the "little white-water;" again, at the new moon in August, the great "wit-water;" by English seamen, generally, the milk-sea, or the "blink."