Chap. X. MANATI LAGOON. 169 
between the sea and the lagoon, through which the salt 
water runs in and out with the tides. The tide being low 
at the time, the water over the bar was too shallow to allow 
us to pass ; but, after having spent some hours very plea- 
santly on the beach, we at last drifted in with the influx of 
high tide. 
The channel is several miles long, narrow and winding. 
From time to time the high mangroves on either side 
intercepted the faint breeze of the evening; then our two 
boatmen took to the oars, and their powerful arms kept 
the sloop in motion. Our progress, however, was neces- 
sarily very slow, and the sun had set when we arrived at 
the end of the channel, where a scene of striking effect was 
suddenly unrolled before our view. Through an opening 
between the two walls of mangroves a double stream of 
light, in the brightest hues of gold and vermilion, burst 
upon our eyes. Emanating from the western horizon, above 
a chain of steep and densely-wooded hills, its rays were 
reflected from the surface of a wide and forest-bound basin 
of water which lay expanded at their foot. A mysterious 
region of darkness between two oceans of light, these hills, 
wrapt already in the shades of night, stood like a barrier 
between an upper and a lower sky. 
Here we entered the Manati Lagoon. Its water, in the 
neighbourhood of the outlet, is very shallow. Our sloop 
touched the ground several times, when our two sailors 
would jump into the water to get her afloat again. We 
anchored near a long and narrow strip of land, running out 
for many miles into the lagoon, from its southern extremity 
to the northward. Here, between groups of cocoa-nut trees, 
and unknown to the rest of the world, are the habitations 
of a small population of negroes and mulattoes, who, ac- 
cording to the languages they speak, must have gathered 
