Moreover, As You Will Have Little Else To
Attend To, Save Mosquitoes And Mangrove Flies, When In Such A
Situation, You May As Well Pursue The Study.
At the ebb gradually
the foliage of the lower branches of the mangroves grows wet and
muddy, until there
Is a great black band about three feet deep above
the surface of the water in all directions; gradually a network of
gray-white roots rises up, and below this again, gradually, a slope
of smooth and lead-grey slime. The effect is not in the least as if
the water had fallen, but as if the mangroves had, with one accord,
risen up out of it, and into it again they seem silently to sink
when the flood comes. But by this more safe, if still unpleasant,
method of observing mangrove-swamps, you miss seeing in full the
make of them, for away in their fastnesses the mangroves raise their
branches far above the reach of tide line, and the great gray roots
of the older trees are always sticking up in mid-air. But, fringing
the rivers, there is always a hedge of younger mangroves whose lower
branches get immersed.
At corners here and there from the river face you can see the land
being made from the waters. A mud-bank forms off it, a mangrove
seed lights on it, and the thing's done. Well! not done, perhaps,
but begun; for if the bank is high enough to get exposed at low
water, this pioneer mangrove grows.
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