|
| ACROSS WOODED ISLAND, NORTHEAST - The three
men at the railing in this picture stand at the southernmost part of
the gondola-landing before the Woman's
Building, and survey a
charming scene that includes the north pavilion of the Japanese
Ho-o-den, or Phoenix Temple, the Government
Building, the house on
the island, in which the Japanese lived, the Fisheries and the Cafe
de la Marine. The low central circular structure is the east
pavilion of the Fisheries, which should be remembered as containing
the most beautiful, surprising and artistically arranged exhibition
of living fishes that was ever seen in America. In a broad fountain
at the centre, cat-fish, muskallonge and sturgeon were visible, and
some of them were five feet long. Around this inner lake a wall of
glass offered to the visitor a study of the king-crab, who lived
under a tortoise's shell, and was in his own body a set of paddles;
of the shark-like fish, with mouths set far back; of the flat-nosed
fish; of the Galapagos turtles, the cats, bulls, sturgeons and other
large creatures. But the visit of visits at the Fair was the entry
into the outer circle or tunnel, where a circle of many scores of
brilliantly-lighted aqueous apartments carried the eye from the funny
burr-fish to the toad-fish, the flounder, the eel, the gold-fish,
silver-fish, trout, and above all, to the sea-grottoes, where the
anemone blossomed into animal life and whispered the dearest secrets
of the great deep. |
