THE NAUTILUS. 69 



Consideration to guide us to the exact hammock where these 

 snails had been found, but when we had arrived at a couple of 

 tumbledown houses in the northern part of the island he 

 didn't know just where it was, but swept his hand around the 

 horizon in a vague way and said the hammock was "off 

 yonder." We found nothing, not even a bone. 



We determined to tramp across the island and make an at- 

 tempt to find Watson's Hammock which lay on the opposite 

 shore. We had been told that we would find the walking fairly 

 good and were given the general direction. In two minutes we 

 ran into a buttonwood swamp which I have since learned covers 

 the greater part of the interior of the island. This is not the 

 buttonwood or sycamore of the northern states, or any kin to it, 

 but a tropical tree with dark, greenish, very combustible wood 

 which inhabits brackish swamps or their immediate vicinity. 

 It is a strange tree, having many forms, sometimes erect with a 

 height of 70 feet and a trunk diameter of two feet; again it falls 

 over and becomes a gigantic, writhing half-vine. On drier 

 ground it is a small, somewhat erect tree, and in this swamp it 

 grew in this fashion, only it threw out a good many stiff, crooked 

 branches just at the ground which admirably served to trip our 

 tired feet. It was only a short time until we came to more or 

 less extensive pools and ponds of beer-colored, brackish water, 

 which we tried for awhile to avoid by making a circuitous 

 tramp around them. Soon, however, it became apparent that 

 we must wade, and we plunged in, often to the depth of three 

 feet, blundering and even falling over the very irregular bottom. 

 Then for a long distance we encountered stands of buttonwood, 

 dense scrub hammock and water. This hammock was, without 

 exception, the most difficult to get through I ever saw. A con- 

 siderable part of it consisted of a small tree or large shrub, a 

 Bumelia or ant's wood, with narrow leaves and innumerable 

 branches. The whole purpose of the tree seemed to be to de- 

 velop and carry an immense load of long, excessively sharp 

 thorns which for their ability to catch hold and hang on cannot 

 be surpassed anywhere. It formed thickets, not quite as dense 

 as a haystack, but the next thing to it, and we could no more 

 crawl through it than we could through the side of a battleship. 



