But a descent in submarine armor is the true way to visit the world under water.  The first sensation in descending is the sudden bursting roar of furious, Niagarac cascades in the ears.  It thunders and booms upon the startled nerve with the rush and storm of an avalanche.  The sense quivers with it.  But it is not air shaken by reflected blows:  it is the cascades driven into the enclosing helmet by the force-pump.  As the flexile hose has to be stiffly distended to bear an aqueous gravity of twenty-five to fifty pounds to the square inch, the force of the current can be estimated.  The tympanum of the ear yields to the fierce external pressure.  The brain feels and multiplies the intolerable tension as if the interior was clamped in a vice, and that tumultuous, thunderous torrent pours on.  Involuntarily the mouth opens:  the air rushes in the Eustachian tube, and with sudden velocity strikes the intruded tension of the drum, which snaps back to its normal state with a sharp, pistol-like crack.  The strain is momently relieved to be renewed again, and again relieved by the same attending salutes.

In your curious dress you must appear monstrous, even to that marine world, familiar with abnormal creations.  The whale looks from eyes on the top of his head; the flat-fish, sole, halibut have both eyes on the same side; and certain Crustacea place the organ on a foot-stalk, as if one were to hold up his eye in his hand to include a wider horizon.  But the monster which the fish now sees differs from all these.  It has four great goggle eyes arranged symmetrically around its head.  Peering through these plate-glass optics, the diver sees the curious, strange beauty of the world around him, not as the bather sees it, blurred and indistinct, but in the calm splendor of its own thallassphere.  The first thought is one of unspeakable admiration of the miraculous beauty of everything around him—­a glory and a splendor of refraction, interference and reflection that puts to shame the Arabian story of the kingdom of the Blue Fish.  Above him is that pure golden canopy with its rare glimmering lustrousness—­something like the soft, dewy effulgence that comes with sun-breaks through showery afternoons.  The soft delicacy of that pure straw-yellow that prevails everywhere is crossed and lighted by tints and glimmering hues of accidental and complementary color indescribably elegant.  The floor of the sea rises like a golden carpet in gentle incline to the surface; but this incline, experience soon teaches, is an ocular deception, the effect of refraction, such as a tumbler of water and a spoon can exhibit in petty.  It is perhaps the first observable warning that you are in a new medium, and that your familiar friend, the light, comes to you altered in its nature; and it is as well to remember this and “make a note on it.”