The Struggle for Life in the Swamp. 255 
but these rot quickly and are not to be compared with 
the living sea defence of the courida. 
Within the memory of many inhabitants of this colony, 
and under the observation of a few, the work of the 
courida has been well exemplified. In the charts of the 
beginning of this century, on the east of the island of 
Leguan is a shoal called the Leguan Bank, and marked 
as " hard sand and dry at low water." Now there is a 
fair-sized island covered with trees at the same place, 
the result of forty years work of the courida, aided by 
circumstances. 
About the year 1862 an estates' schooner named the 
Dauntless was wrecked on the Leguan Bank and gradu- 
ally broken up by the waves. A year later a few seeds 
began to germinate on the slight elevation covering 
the hull, on which also some members of the Pilot 
Service threw a number of courida seeds and other 
floating debris. When once the young plants gained 
headway they began to spread, every year taking over 
more and more until now the Dauntless Island is an 
accomplished fa6l, only requiring to be empoldered to 
become habitable. In forty years it has grown until it is 
about two miles long by one broad and continually in- 
creasing in size, perhaps to join the island of Leguan at 
some future period. The work of the courida has un- 
doubtedly been made possible by the help of currents, 
but until the wreck provided a nucleus for the growth 
of the tree the same shallow had existed for an indefinite 
period without the slightest sign of becoming more than 
the Leguan sand-bank. 
All along the coast of Guiana these trees are always 
at work, with the general result that more land is con- 
112 
