Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 1 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
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Moreover, A Thick Wood Spreading Over Marshy Grounds Would Diffuse
Noxious Exhalations In The Atmosphere, Even Though That Wood Were
Composed Of Trees Possessing In Themselves No Deleterious
Properties.
Wherever mangroves grow on the sea-shore, the beach is
covered with infinite numbers of molluscs and insects.
These
animals love shade and faint light, and they find themselves
sheltered from the shock of the waves amid the scaffolding of thick
and intertwining roots, which rises like lattice-work above the
surface of the waters. Shell-fish cling to this lattice; crabs
nestle in the hollow trunks; and the seaweeds, drifted to the coast
by the winds and tides, remain suspended on the branches which
incline towards the earth. Thus, maritime forests, by the
accumulation of a slimy mud between the roots of the trees,
increase the extent of land. But whilst these forests gain on the
sea, they do not enlarge their own dimensions; on the contrary,
their progress is the cause of their destruction. Mangroves, and
other plants with which they live constantly in society, perish in
proportion as the ground dries and they are no longer bathed with
salt water. Their old trunks, covered with shells, and half-buried
in the sand, denote, after the lapse of ages, the path they have
followed in their migrations, and the limits of the land which they
have wrested from the ocean.
The bay of Higuerote is favourably situated for examining Cape
Codera, which is there seen in its full extent seven miles distant.
This promontory is more remarkable for its size than for its
elevation, being only about two hundred toises high.
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