NATURAL HISTORY AND PHYSIOGRAPHY OF NEW BRUNSWICK. 23 
above the high tide, gives place to loose sand easily moved by 
the wind, but prevented by the omnipresent beach grass from 
forming dunes of appreciable size. Landward the slope is more 
gentle, and is clothed above by the waving beach grass, lower 
by a close, fine, swale-like turf, still lower by a close salt marsh, 
whence, with a very irregular margin, it dips imperceptibly 
beneath the surface of the lagoon. This lagoon is varyingly 
shallow, with a bottom of sandy mud which supports a great 
growth of the salt-water eel grass, Zostera marina, whose extreme 
abundance is a characteristic feature of these lagoons, and which 
is only wanting where salt marshes form in coves or angles, or 
where the river channels wind their sinuous ways to the gullies. 
These lagoons, partly because of their shelter and partly because 
of the calming effect of the eel grass, are always smooth and 
safe no matter how hard the winds may blow, or how roughly 
the sea is breaking upon the coast just outside. This safety 
made them great canoe routes for the Indians and led an early 
voyager (Smethurst, in 1761) to speak of them as “the finest 
conveniences possible for canoes.” This is something of which 
I can myself assure the truth, for I have sailed my canoe upon 
them miles and miles in happy safety under a wind that strove 
to tear the sail from its fastenings and raised roaring surges upon 
the beaches outside. Somewhere the lagoon receives the river, 
up which the tide, here with a range of some five or six feet, 
runs as a quiet estuary or tideway for many miles, branching in 
places into many marshy coves and creeks. 
Taken as a whole these islands, which the residents invariably 
call Beaches, are singularly uniform in their characters. Except- 
ing Portage and Fox Islands, which are beaches of such immense 
development and special features as to deserve treatment in a 
separate note (Note No. 107), they are quite treeless, clothed 
only with the sparse Beach Grass, intermixed, in sheltered places, 
with low clumps of the Wax Myrtle, Hudsonia, Dwarf Roses, 
Sweet Gale, and a few rarer plants of humble habit. This grass, 
with that of the salt marshes, is cut sometimes for hay, and some- 
times is used as pasture for horses and cattle, whereby the 
Beaches yield a small tribute to man. But a richer harvest is 
