IV 

 A JUNGLE BEACH 



A JUXGLE moon first showed nie my beach. 

 For a week I had looked at it in blazing sunlight, 

 rvalked across it, even sat on it in the intervals 

 of getting wonted to the new laboratory; yet I 

 had not perceived it. Colonel Roosevelt once 

 said to me that he would rather perceive things 

 from the point of view of a field-mouse, than be 

 a human being and merely see them. And in my 

 case it was when I could no longer see the beach 

 that I began to discern its significance. 



This British Guiana beach, just in front of 

 my Kartabo bungalow, was remarkably diversi- 

 fied, and in a few steps, or strokes of a paddle, 

 I could pass from clean sand to mangroves and 

 muckamucka swamp, thence to out- jutting rocks, 

 and on to the Edge of the World, all within a dis- 

 tance of a hundred yards. For a time my beach 

 walks resulted in inarticulate reaction. After 

 months in the blindfolded canyons of New York's 

 streets, a hemicircle of horizon, a hemisphere o^ 



90 



