130 THE FLOOD-TIDE. 



diminutive but invincible assailants. The tide set 

 past the boats at the rate of four knots per hour, 

 and it fell 33 feet, being 6 feet more than we had 

 as yet found it. The only rock seen here was a 

 block, visible at low water ; it was a conglomerate, 

 and the most southerly formation of the kind we 

 met with. 



February 26. — The daylight found us all 

 anxiously speculating upon the probable results to 

 be accomplished before the darkness once more 

 closed in upon us, but the morning being perfectly 

 calm, we were compelled to wait till the flood-tide 

 made : this soon took us past an island four miles 

 from the eastern shore, seen the evening before, and 

 which now proved to be a narrow strip, covered with 

 the never-failing mangrove ; and having two smaller 

 islands, nearly identical in character, lying two 

 miles south of it. We passed them at noon, and 

 saw the land to the westward, our position being- 

 then 20 miles south of Point Torment. The water 

 had shoaled in several places during the passage to 

 less than a fathom (low water) ; but the tide hem- 

 med in by the contraction of this great inlet, (the 

 left shore of which gradually trending to the east- 

 ward, here approached to within six miles of the 

 opposite coast,) still hurried us on with a rapi- 

 dity agreeable enough but not quite free from 

 danger, towards what appeared to be the mouth of 

 a large river. If our exultation had been great in 

 the morning, when such success as this was only half 



