A SEA-SHORE IN BRITISH GUIANA 63 
shoulder, and we ask him the name of this strange fish. “ Four- 
eyes, baas,” he replies ; “ he got two eye to see in de air with, 
and two eye to see in de water.” This, then, is the reason of its 
swimming with half its head above the surface. The eyes are 
in reality two, not four, in number ; but each eye is divided into 
two parts, the upper half of the lens not being so globular as the 
lower half, so that it well deserves its popular name, as well as 
its scientific name of Anableps tctrophthalmus. 
By this time we have reached the thick band of courida trees 
which skirts the shore. Many pools of water have been left 
among the samphire-like crab-grass and hundreds of coast birds 
are flying about them. Yonder is a flight of small snipe-like 
birds called knits (possibly a corruption of the English “ knot ”), 
consisting of about a hundred individuals, and beyond them on 
the higher ground by that button-wood tree, which reminds us of 
the English alders, are a few “ long-legs,” which are larger birds 
of the same type — and all around, flying over the crab-grass and 
flitting through courida and button- wood trees, are numbers 
of butterflies resembling the “large white” of English gardens. 
We have now reached the shore itself. Nothing more unlike 
a typical British sea-shore can well be imagined. The sea as far 
as the eye can reach is a dirty yellow, and where there is any 
sand at all it is mixed with mud. This mud is fairly hard and 
it is further consolidated by the far-spreading roots of the courida 
( Avicennia nitida), and by an immense number of shoots about 
the thickness of a lead pencil which springing from the same 
roots reach the surface of the mud but appear never to bear 
leaves or grow into new trees. These shoots make walking 
possible even when the mud is moderately soft. Beyond the 
roots a narrow strip of rounded lumps of clay forms an apology 
for shingle ; for there is not a pebble to be found throughout the 
front lands of Guiana: a few gasteropod shells are lying on a 
strip of muddy sand ; and further out the mud stretches away to 
the incoming sea. 
The tide is not yet in, and large numbers of slate-grey, white, 
and piebald gaulins (herons) are scattered over the shore, and a 
so-called “ blue crane,” a giant by comparison, is standing like a 
sentinel by the side of a tree-stump. A large number of these 
stumps are standing for about three hundred yards out to sea- 
wards, and probably the advancing tide has already covered 
many others. The sea is rapidly eating away the coast at this 
spot. Yonder you can see a dozen courida trees which, in spite 
of the resistance their matted roots present to the waves, are 
being gradually cut off from the land. Far away in the distance 
are three fishing boats, and nearer in a few nets, fixed to stakes, 
are being covered by the advancing tide. 
We now turn back and walk through the courida trees 
towards the road. After we have gone a few hundred yards we 
take a path to the left which crosses the trench and runs parallel 
to the sea. This path is, in fact, a dam which keeps the sea out 
