-wind to rob the land, but before the former has
got far with its prey, the land sends its honest west-wind to recover
some of its own. But, according to Lieutenant Davis, the forms, extent,
and distribution of sand-bars and banks are principally determined, not
by winds and waves, but by tides.

Our host said that you would be surprised, if you were on the beach when
the wind blew a hurricane directly on to it, to see that none of the
drift-wood came ashore, but all was carried directly northward and
parallel with the shore as fast as a man can walk, by the in-shore
current, which sets strongly in that direction at flood-tide. The
strongest swimmers also are carried along with it, and never gain an
inch toward the beach. Even a large rock has been moved half a mile
northward along the beach. He assured us that the sea was never still on
the back side of the Cape, but ran commonly as high as your head, so
that a great part of the time you could not launch a boat there, and
even in the calmest weather the waves run six or eight feet up the
beach, though then you could get off on a plank. Champlain and
Poitrincourt could not land here in 1606, on account of the swell, (_la
houlle_,) yet the savages came off to them in a canoe. In the Sieur de
la Borde's "Relation des Caraibes," my edition of which was published at
Amsterdam in 1711, at page 530 he says:--

"Couroumon a Caraibe, also a star [_i.e._ a god], makes the
great _lames a la mer_, and overturns canoes. _Lames a la mer_
are the long _vagues_ which are not broken (_entrecoupees_),
and such as one sees come to land all in one piece, from one
end of a beach to another, so that, however little wind there
may be, a shallop or a canoe could hardly land (_aborder
terre_) without turning over, or being filled with water."

But on the Bay side, the water, even at its edge, is often as smooth and
still as in a pond. Commonly there are no boats used along this beach.
There was a boat belonging to the Highland Light, which the next keeper,
after he had been there a year, had not launched, though he said that
there was good fishing just off the shore. Generally the life-boats
cannot be used when needed. When the waves run very high, it is
impossible to get a boat off, however skilfully you steer it, for it
will often be completely covered by the curving edge of the approaching
breaker as by an arch, and so filled with water, or it will be li