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2. All the motion of the sea on that shore depends upon the 

 wind. Its agencies are twofold ; first, the daily change of sea and 

 land wind, the former beginning to blow in the morning about 

 eight o'clock, the latter in the evening between six and nine. 

 The latter is much more constant, and being also more powerful, 

 it depresses, every evening, the level of the sea all along the coast 

 from one to two feet. But there is, secondly, another, a yearly 

 change of the winds, viz : a prevailing northerly wind in winter, 

 particularly in December, January, and February, and a prevail- 

 ing southerly wind in summer. This great change produces 

 this eiFect, that in the season of the North, as they call it there, 

 the level of the sea is constantly, on the average, eight feet higher 

 than in summer. 



How much this change bears, also, upon the organic life of the 

 sea-coast, is evident. I will only state that during the last week 

 of May and the first of June, in one place not larger than an 

 acre, more than a hundred Actineaj and Holothurias died, because 

 left upon dry land ; not to speak of the thousands of other ani- 

 mals, fishes, echini, etc., and of sea-plants which died in those 

 natural basins near the sea, where the water, cut off" from the 

 refreshing ocean, was overheated by the nearly perpendicular 

 rays of the tropical sun. The rising of the land from the waves, 

 the same that we know took place repeatedly in the great epochs of 

 the history of our globe, and which, as Dr. J. D. Dana once said, 

 brought death among the sea tribes in one universal desolation, — 

 the same we see now on the northern shore of this island, i-e- 

 peated annually with the change of the winds ; and though on a 

 smaller scale, yet destroying hosts of living organisms. More- 

 over, in that stormy season of the North, the whole bottom of 

 the ocean, all along the shore, at more than five fathoms depth, is 

 swept, and not only all the dead remains but many living shell- 

 fishes, and large blocks of corals, are dashed against the iron- 

 bound coast and thrown up on dry land. This is the season 

 dreaded equally by the Haytian coasters and tiie merchant vessel 

 in the harbor. The former, when overcome by a dark, stormy 

 night, without a compass, an instrument unknown to them, are 

 driven helpless along the shore, and their small boats frequently 

 thrown against the rocks. The latter, the merchant vessel, drags 



