10 OUR SEARCH FOR A WILDERNESS. 



this world of salt water. In fact, it makes its own footing, 

 entangling and holding mud and debris about its stems, and 

 ever blindly reaching out dangling roots, like the legs of 

 gigantic spiders. 



Far out on the tip of a lofty branch a mangrove seed \vill 

 germinate, before it falls assuming the appearance of a 

 loaded club from eight to fifteen inches in length. One day 

 it lets go and drops like a plummet into the soft mud, where 

 it sticks upright. Soon the tide rises, and if there is too 

 strong a current the young plant is swept away, to perish 

 far out at sea; but if it can maintain its hold, roots soon 

 spring out, and the ideal of the mangrove is realized, the 

 purpose for which all this interesting phenomena is intended : 

 the forest has gained a few yards, and mud and leaves will 

 soon choke out the intervening water. 



The mangroves have still another method of gaining new 

 territory. Aerial roots are thrown out from branches high 

 in air, swinging downward and outward with a curve which 

 sometimes wins three or four yards ahead. Like hawsers 

 thrown from a vessel to a wharf these roots clutch at the mud 

 beneath, but where the current runs swiftly they swing and 

 dangle in vain, until they have grown so heavy that they 

 touch bottom some distance downstream. We made use of 

 these dangling roots as anchors for our canoe, bending the 

 elastic unattached end upward and springing it over the 

 gunwale. 



Throughout all this great region there is not a foot of solid 

 ground. In one place we pushed a tall shoot some eight feet 

 in height straight down through the mud, and it went out of 

 sight. A man falling on this mud, out of reach of aid, would 

 vanish as in a quick-sand. So the wild creatures of the 

 mangroves must either swim, fly, or climb. No terrestrial 

 beings can exist there. We once selected a favorable place, 

 and for fifty yards made our way over the roots and branches 



