WATER'S-EDGE IN HAITI 



into the farther end, and after it, pell-mell, two of 

 my countryfolk, a parula warbler and a Maryland 

 yellow-throat. They sensed me, and, in spite of 

 our common nationality, fled headlong with only a 

 single chirp between them. 



The tide was going down my sloping sand and on 

 the uppermost ten feet I could read in the deep 

 ripple marks the record of the strong wind which 

 had whistled around our schooner tents at midnight. 

 When I reached the five o'clock zone of calm, the 

 sand's surface was smooth as paper. Nothing in 

 the world seemed more certain than that in a few 

 hours the returning tide would wipe out every 

 ripple mark, and yet I recalled many fossilized 

 beaches, some over a mile above the present sea, 

 where the tide had never returned, where by some 

 velvet convulsion of Mother Earth the delicate 

 furrows of shifting grains had become solid stone. 



Everywhere on the smooth sand were records, as 

 clear as tracks on snow, of watery beings who were 

 compromising or pioneering in this ribbon king- 

 dom of dual elements — forever fought for by water 

 and by air. The fiddlers were high up shore, 

 pretending that they were land folk, yet never 

 daring wholly to desert the dampness. 



On mid-beach a few fiddlers were working like 

 fury, digging tunnels and throwing up breast- 

 works, piling pellets of sand with as perfect con- 

 fidence as the foolish man in the Bible. Below 

 them were scores of parallel lines drawn by terrified, 

 little black snails all of whose bravado about the 



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