Island, located off the Texas coast, is seventy miles long and is 

 now connected with the mainland by a causeway and bridge at 

 the southern end at the mouth of the Rio Grande so that cars 

 can be driven its entire length along the beach. Third, inside this 

 sandspit lies what is called the "Inland Waterway." 



This is a shallow paradise for fish and fishing birds, and it is 

 dotted and sometimes filled with low sand or salt-grass-covered 

 islands between which meander narrow channels. To the land- 

 ward side of this inland stretch of water comes the coast line 

 proper. This, the fourth belt or strip, alternates between vast 

 open grass-covered marshes and bights with many creeks, chan- 

 nels, and ponds, and stretches of sand beach rising to modest 

 clifflike banks. These are old sand dunes. Some are covered with 

 beautiful lush grass, whereas upon others stand continuous 

 closed-canopy forests of evergreen oaks all leaning madly away 

 from the sea and the wind. Their trunks are naked and very 

 pale, and their lower limbs writhe like things possessed, while 

 their dense, dark-green head foliage trails off landward like a 

 semideflated air cushion. To landward of these marginal dunes 

 lies the fifth coastal belt, which is the coastal plain, so called, 

 known alternatively as the coastal prairies. These are not true 

 prairies though in large part covered with very short grass. Upon 

 them are many pools, ponds, and shallow lakes, and all about 

 them meander dry chaparrals. Little groves of stunted gallery 

 forest grow along the stream beds, and they are dotted with 

 clumps of cactus, here mostly prickly pear, engulfed in herbs and 

 thin-stemmed bushes and mesquite trees; there are also copses 

 of stunted oaks and other trees. This country continues inland to 

 the first low escarpment. Its soil is mostly sandy, with wedges of 

 fine silt where rivers flow from the uplands. 



The same arrangement extends along the Mexican coast south 

 of the Rio Grande delta, which forms a large open area of 

 marshes and mud flats bounded on the seaward side by sand 

 dunes. However, the South Scrub vegetation lacks grass even 

 immediately behind the coast, the leaning oaks are scarcer, and 

 the chaparrals grow in massed formation right down to the 

 dunes, which are covered with creeping salt-resistant succulents. 

 Salt marshes continue and are just as extensive. On the offshore 

 sandspit there are dune grasses, but the sea grapes and the 

 buttonwoods have here moved in from the islands beyond and 

 sometimes form dense low masses where many colonies of birds 

 breed. Beneath these may be dark, dank, bare, black mud. At the 

 southern end of this stretch of coast the evidence of past hurri- 

 canes often extends for miles inland in the form of ramparts of 

 deadwood and other vegetable debris. 



The sand dunes all along the offshore side of the sandspit are 

 very remarkable in that they lie in an evenly spaced rank, in 

 echelon, all having their long axis running from northwest to 

 southeast. They average about thirty to fifty feet in height and 

 are held together with bunches of coarse grass. On the inner or 



Top left: The so-called Brown Pelican is. in its adult plum- 

 age, a satiny gray bird with vivid white and yellow mark- 

 ings. This species is maritime and is represented on both 

 coasts. 



Top right: An American Avocet, a highly colorful wader 

 that is now common over a large part of the South and 

 West. It has a curiously upturned beak. 



Bottom: The Spoonbill appears in great flocks all around 

 the Gulf coast. One of its chief nesting places is an island 

 off the Texas shore. 



