Changes in the Coast Line, 187 
alternated by speeches, and huge bowls of whiskey punch with endless 
toasts. 
bill. After our host had replaced my runaway Indians with some 
of Ins own people, our little liotiila, increased by tbe two boats in which 
tlic Missionary, las brother, and the catechist had taken passage, started 
away at daybreak. 
o-ö. rue Morocco continues its course for a considerable distance 
along the same llat whicii, broken up by rising mils and forested areas oi 
larger or smaller size, stretches far to me eastward until it runs out into 
the immediate coast at the mouth of the Pomeroon and Morocco. During 
a subsequent stay in this district 1 became more intimately acquainted 
with the south-eastern limits of this tract. 
629. The change of vegetation showed that we were getting nearer 
the coast, until finally the Rliizophora, once more met with, vouched lor 
its being actually reached when the blue-green waters of the Atlantic 
Ocean, across which our small corials had to risk a 7-mile voyage to the 
Pomeroon, shone through the Morocco mouth. The strong breakers did 
not allow of our hugging the coast with the frail vessels, but forced us to 
follow a course considerably out to sea so as to keep beyond their reach, 
as well as that of the large number of mud banks which usually are found 
in plenty along the whole Guiana coast, but more especially here. That 
these mud-banks, so dangerous to coastal shipping, constitute the main 
nucleus in the ever nascent formation of the Guiana coast, admits of no 
doubt, although their origin, not having been ascertained with certainty, 
has been explained along the most varied lines. Their often magically rapid 
appearance and disappearance have at all events something very mys- 
terious about it. Where the eye, only a few days before, saw but a smooth 
surface of water, there suddenly appear more or less soft mud-banks of 
varying size which, after a short time, are just as quickly washed away 
by the breakers or currents. Often only isolated portions disappear, or 
become outwardly altered, but frequently the high wasliing-tide carries 
them bodily on to the immediate coast-line where, out of reach of the 
general drift and rise and fall of the waves, they come to form part and 
parcel of it, so to speak, through the agencies of the Rhizophom, Avicen- 
nia and Conocarpus. The whole of the extensive coast-line is thus subject 
to continual change, and many a du eller on the coast who- a few years 
before could look from his windows out on the sea, now finds himself 
separated from it by a thick forest of Rliizophom. The eastern point 
of Cape Nassau, that at the same time builds the eastern bank of the 
Pomeroon, affords the most convincing proof of this remark. Mr. 
McClintock assured me that during his six years’ residence this had 
lengthened about one-eighth of a mile, while the spit on the western 
bank, on the other hand, had gained about forty feet. Further confirma- 
tion of this continual increase of sea-front is also forthcoming in the 
successive growths of coast-vegetation which, according to their different 
ages, rise one above the other inland like terraces of an amphitheatre. 
The origin of these mud-banks is for the most part attributed to the 
detritus which, during the rainy season and heavy floods the rivers roll 
into the sea. Even were I to admit that this might have something to 
