A LAGOON. 211 



CTeat. Their brain seems to act like that of the alligator or 

 the pike, paroxysmally, and by rare fits and starts, after lying 

 for hours motionless as if asleep. But when excited, they 

 will attempt great deeds. Dr. De Yerteuil tells a story and 

 if he tells it, it must be believed of some hunters who 

 wounded a deer. The deer ran for the stream down a bank : 

 but the hunters had no sooner heard it splash into the water 

 than they heard it scream. They leapt down to the place, 

 and found it in the coils of a Huillia, which they killed with 

 the deer. And yet this snake, which had dared to seize a 

 full-grown deer, could have had no hope of eating her ; for 

 it was only seven feet long. 



We set out down a foul porter-coloured creek, which soon 

 opened out into a river, reminding us, in spite of all dif- 

 ferences, of certain alder and willow-fringed reaches of the 

 Thames. But here the wood which hid the margin was 

 altogether of mangrove; the common Ehizophoras, or black 

 mangroves, being, of course, the most abundant. Over them, 

 however, rose the statelier Avicennias, or white mangroves, to 

 a height of fifty or sixty feet, and poured down from their 

 upper branches whole streams of air-roots, which waved and 

 creaked dolefully in the breeze overhead. But on the water 

 was no breeze at all. The lagoon was still as glass ; the sun 

 was sickening ; and we were glad to put up our umbrellas and 

 look out from under them for Manatis and Boas. But the 



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