BRANNEE: THE STONE EEEFS OF BRAZIL. 117 



the Eio Forraoso reef, where it is popularly known as the " Pedra de 

 JS'ossa Senhora." At ordinary high tide the reefs all along the coast 

 appear for the most part as a line of breakers with black points of 

 rock now exposed and now covered by the surf. Whether the waves 

 break over the reef during neap tides depends much on the winds 

 blowing on shore. At low tide these reefs almost invariably stand out 

 like black walls surf-beaten on the seaward side. 



If any one acquainted with the reefs should say that they were entirely 

 covered at high tide, there would be some one else equally well ac- 

 quainted with them to contend and to prove that they were never 

 entirely covered. 



But as long as the unbroken reef rocks do not rise beyond the reach 

 of the highest storm tides we are not justified in assuming that they 

 have been elevated. 



There has been a certain apparent recession of the sea, due, however, 

 not to the elevation of the land, but to the silting up of the marshes, 

 estuaries, lakes, and mangrove swamps behind the reefs. 



In 1881 MM. Victor Fournie, sometime city engineer of Pernambuco, 

 and Emile Beringer, his assistant, published a " memoire sur le port du 

 Recife " ^ accompanied by a carefully made (in 1876) map of Pernam- 

 buco and its environs. On this same map is an overprint of the best 

 map it was possible to compile from those made by the Dutch, of the 

 same region, during the first half of the seventeenth century. This map 

 is the most important document we have of the kind bearing upon coast 

 changes within historic times. It shows that since these early maps were 

 made, channels then open have filled up, others have been much nar- 

 rowed, and large areas, then either swamps or quite under water, have 

 become dry lands and have been built up with houses. ,M. Beringer 

 remarks (p. 20), " The Sao Jose quarter was a great marsh covered at 

 high tide," while the width of the channel at the Recife bridge was 

 nearly half as great again as it was in 187G. 



Condudons. — The statements here cited and the facts given, some of 

 them dating back to the first half of the sixteenth century, — more than 

 three hundred yeai's ago, — suggest, if they do not show conclusively, 

 that there has been no striking, or even, to the ordinary intelligent 

 observer, perceptible change in the reefs from that time to this, while 

 the channels then open behind them have been gradually filled up. If, 

 then, there has been an elevation or depression of this coast within the 



1 Bijbladen van bet Tijdschrift van het Aardrijkskundig Genootschep. Am- 

 sterdam, 1881. 



