Moreover, a small nugget appeared in the swish
being prepared for a house-wall. Thus 'washing' will be easy and
inexpensive, and the Wesleyan mission may secure funds for extending
itself into the non-maritime regions.
We turned the boat's head shorewards, and, after encountering the normal
three seas, ran her upon the beach near the right jaw of Prince's River.
The actual mouth is between natural piers of sea-blackened trap-rock, and
the gullet behind it could at this season be cleared by an English hunter.
We unloaded and warped our conveyance round the gape till she rode safe in
the inner broad. And now we saw that Prince's is not the river of the
hydrographic chart, but a true lagoon-stream, the remains of a much larger
formation. There has been, here and on other parts of the coast, a little
archipelago whose islets directed the riverine courses; the shallows
between were warped up by mangrove and other swampy vegetation, and the
whole has become, after a fashion, _terra firma_. Each holm had doubtless
a core of rock, whose decay produced a rich soil. Now they are mounds and
ridges of red clay standing up abruptly, and their dense growths of dark
yew-like trees contrast with the yellowish produce of the adjacent miry
lowlands.
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