ON THE SEA-SHORE. 247 



quarter where the dam is weaker. Perhaps the 

 manager of a plantation has cut down his advanced 

 guard to admit the pleasant breeze and cool his 

 verandah. Here is an opportunity for vengeance, 

 and soon the masses of dead roots are carried off 

 wholesale, the mud dam is washed away, and the 

 front of the estate flooded with sea water. When 

 such an opening does not occur the current goes on 

 looking for the weakest point in the long line. 

 Woe betide the courida if it be not prepared ; it 

 is lifted up, carried away bodily, and dashed to 

 pieces by the waves. Even yet, however, the 

 courida may have kept guard so well that all the 

 efforts of the raging current cannot find the smallest 

 opening. Then it goes scouring along the coast, 

 deepening a channel here, filling up another there, 

 now taking a foot off a sand-bank which was dry 

 at low water, and then throwing its tons of suspended 

 matter aside to form the nucleus of an island, to 

 the utter consternation of the pilots whose calcula- 

 tions are upset by the catastrophe. 



Perhaps our readers may think we are going too 

 far in ascribing all this to the work of the courida, 

 but we can assure them that such things are con- 

 tinually happening here, and that they are primarily 

 due to this wonderful tree admits of no dispute. 

 How often an estates manager has had to rue the 



