BABBLING BEACHES 99 



and whiten in the sun and reinforce the sand, and in 

 their decay, with ever contributed seaweed, to make 

 mould for vegetation. The work of encroachment and 

 consolidation is incessant and strangely rapid, for 

 vegetation never lacks pioneers of special character to 

 prepare the way for the less venturesome and less hardy. 

 Often before vegetation appears, coral chips, shells, 

 small stones, and sharp gravel, are concreted into 

 platter-shaped masses which seem to become the base 

 of blocks of rough conglomerate, capable of resisting 

 the attacks of the sea; and a few yards back, where a 

 mangrove-bordered creek once existed, the mud and 

 decayed fragments of wood have been transformed into 

 a black, cheesy substance which might be mistaken for 

 soft coal. So do these beaches lay bare their secrets. 



When the mainland streams pour out their floods and 

 the commingled volume hurries north in a mud-tinted, 

 sharply delimited current, and whole trees are cast up 

 on the beaches of far-away isles, vivid examples of the 

 dispersion of animate and inanimate things by purely 

 natural means are afforded. Weighty stones are found 

 locked among roots which, as the wood decays, are 

 deposited on alien sands, thereafter to invite specula- 

 tion as to origin and means of transport. On one such 

 raft voyaged a living specimen of the white and black 

 banded snake, one of the most singular of the family, 

 for Nature has bestowed on it a placid disposition, and 

 provided it with an unmischievous mouth and fangs so 

 minute that, although classed as venomous, it is not 

 considered injurious to man. Though strange and 

 interesting, on the plea that the family is quite suffici- 

 ently represented, the derelict was unwelcome, save as a 

 living proof of the practicability of natural transports. 

 By what grace, indeed, could the creature which earned 

 the Almighty's bitter curse be accepted as "wilsam" — 



