FIRST LIST OF THE BIRDS OF THE SOUTH KONKAN. 13 



As you sail along you will see very little pasture, save 

 coarse rank grass, and will note the absence of sheep, and 

 the leanness of the stunted kine. Goats alone of the domestic 

 animals contrive to pick up a decent subsistence, browsing 

 contentedly on the few forlorn leaves that sprout through 

 the crevices of the rocks. The few sheep that are brought 

 down from the Ghats to the large towns rapidly deteriorate. 

 Horses lose bloom and condition, and buffaloes give less and 

 thinner milk. So when you visit the South Konkan you 

 must make up your mind to be satisfied with a diet of 

 fish and fowl, prawns, crabs, and oysters, and Alphonse 

 mangoes during the season. Beef you will never get, and 

 if wise you will avoid goat mutton. 



Coast Line. — You will see as you proceed that the coast line 

 is everywhere rocky and dangerous, more particularly so be- 

 tween Malvan and Vengurla. Bold bluff headlands of black rock, 

 bare and gaunt, jut into the sea in close, but irregular, succession. 

 Behind these promontories, and scarcely discernible from the 

 track of coasting craft, lie numerous snug bays and coves edged 

 with white sand. In the more exposed portions of the bays 

 the sand is blown into low hills or dunes, covered with sea 

 pinks (Spinifex squarrosus), and sand convolvulus (C. pes-capra) 

 with here and there a madder bush and a rough fence to land- 

 wards of screw pines (Pandanus odoratissimus) , and other 

 shrubs that flourish in a sandy soil. In places cocoanuts are 

 grown in these drifts, but the attempt is not usually successful. 

 The dunes shift so continually with the action of the coast 

 currents and northerly breezes, that they ill repay the expendi- 

 ture of capital. Years hence they will probably be covered with 

 forests of Casuarina trees. 



In places where the hills recede, rich levels of alluvial silt, 

 brought down by the rivers, are found, wherein are made good 

 rice fields and productive cocoanut gardens. Every ten 

 miles or so is a river or a backwater, large enough to form a 

 safe port for a small native craft during the north-west breezes. 

 There are, however, but few harbours open during the south- 

 west monsoon. The water near shore has a good average depth, 

 but the mouths of all the larger rivers, with the notable excep- 

 tion of Vijaydurg, are blocked by formidable bars, which, 

 at all times difficult to navigate, are during the rainy seasons 

 impassable. The estuaries of the principal rivers are flanked 

 by numerous sandbanks, where they meet the ocean's wave, 

 and further inland, with large stretches of mud flats and 

 salt marshes. The tidal gullets and backwaters are fringed 

 with mangrove swamps of varying extent, thickly covered 

 with Bruguiera thecdi and other Khizophoracece, and peopled 



