mong
them, in every stage of decay; dying, seemingly, by gradual
submergence of their roots, and giving a ghastly and ragged
appearance to the forest. At the mouth of the little river Nariva,
a few miles down, is proof positive, unless I am much mistaken, of
similar subsidence. For there I found trees of all sizes--roseau
scrub among them--standing rooted below high-tide mark; and killed
where they grew.

So we rode on, stopping now and then to pick up shells; chip-chips,
{274a} which are said to be excellent eating; a beautiful purple
bivalve, {274b} to which, in almost every case, a coralline {274c}
had attached itself, of a form quite new to me. A lash some
eighteen inches long, single or forked; purplish as long as its coat
of lime--holding the polypes--still remained, but when that was
rubbed off a mere round strip of dark horn; and in both cases
flexible and elastic, so that it can be coiled up and tied in knots;
a very curious and graceful piece of Nature's workmanship. Among
them were curious flat cake-urchins, with oval holes punched in
them, so brittle that, in spite of all our care, they resolved
themselves into the loose sand of which they had been originally
compact; and I could therefore verify neither their genus nor their
species.

These were all, if I recollect, that we found that day. The next
day we came on hundreds of a most beautiful bivalve, {274d} their
purple colour quite fresh, their long spines often quite uninjured.
Some change of the sandy bottom had unearthed a whole warren of the
lovely things; and mixed with chip-chips innumerable, and with a
great bivalve {274e} with a thin wing along the anterior line of the
shell, they strewed the shore for a quarter of a mile and more.

We came at last to a little river, or rather tideway, leading from
the lagoon to the sea, which goes by the name of Doubloon River.
Some adventurous Spaniard, the story goes, contracted to make a
cutting which would let off the lagoon water in time of flood for
the sum of one doubloon--some three pound five; spent six times the
money on it; and found his cutting, when once the sea had entered,
enlarge into a roaring tideway, dangerous, often impassable, and
eating away the Cocal rapidly toward the south; Mother Earth, in
this case at least, having known her own business better than the
Spaniard.

How we took off our saddles, sat down on the sand, hallooed, waited;
how a