THE DOUBLOON RIVER. 203 



These were all, if I recollect, that we found that day. 

 The next day we came on hundreds of a most beautiful 

 bivalve/ 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 '^ 

 with a thin win^r aloncf" the anterior line of the shell, thev 

 strewed the shore for a quarter of a mile and more. 



AVe came at last to a little river, or rather tideway, lead- 

 ing from the lagoon to the sea, which goes by the name 

 of Doubloon Eiver. Some adventurous Spaniard, the story 

 goes, contracted to make a cutting which would let off the 

 lasjoon 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, wdien once the sea had entered, enlarge 

 into a roaring tideway, dangerous, often impassable, and 

 eating away the Cocal rapidly toward the south ; JMother 

 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 black policeman whose house was 

 just being carried away by the sea appeared at last with 

 a canoe ; how we and our baggage got over one by one 

 in the hollow log without by seeming miracle being swept 



1 Cvtherea Dione. 2 Mactrella tilata. 



