Littoral zone

“ What we may term the littoral or shore zone of the sea occupies a belt of prevailingly shallow water, varying in width from a few score to a few hundred miles. Where the bottom descends steeply from the coast, where there are no strong off-shore setting currents, and where the region is not near the mouth of a large river which bears a great tide of sediment to the sea, the land waste may not affect the bottom for more than a mile or two from the shore. ”

“ The third zone loses its arid character as it approaches the coast, and is better clothed with vegetation. The coastal plain varies in width and character: in some places low and sandy, or swampy, filled with lagoons and intersecting canals; in others more elevated, rolling and very fertile. The climate corresponds closely to these surface features, being hot and dry throughout the interior, hot and humid, in places unhealthy, along the coast. ”

“ Where sea and river meet, Nature draws no sharp dividing line. Here the indeterminate boundary zone is conspicuous. The fresh water stream merges into brackish estuary, estuary into saltier inlet and inlet into briny ocean. Closely confined sea basins like the Black and Baltic, located in cool regions of slight evaporation and fed from a large catchment basin, approach in their reduced salinity the fresh water lakes and coastal lagoons in which rivers stretch out to rest on their way to the ocean. ”

“ The Coast Range, rising as a grand green barrier against the ocean, from 2000 to 8000 feet high, is composed of innumerable forest-crowned spurs, ridges, and rolling hill-waves which inclose a multitude of smaller valleys; some looking out through long, forest-lined vistas to the sea; others, with but few trees, to the Central Valley; while a thousand others yet smaller are embosomed and concealed in mild, round-browed hills, each, with its own climate, soil, and productions. ”

“ The length of the beach thus casually examined is not more than a quarter of a mile long, and no plant mentioned is more than a few yards from high-water mark, the soil being almost pure sand. Imagine some three square miles of country varied by hills and flats of rich soil, with creeks and ravines, precipices and bluffs, dense jungle and thick forest, hollows wherein water lodges in the wet season, and granite ridges, and then endeavour to comprehend the botany of one small island of the tropical coast! ”

“ Broken wooded ridges, deeply cleft, rise from the water’s edge, gray, deep-roofed villages cluster about the mouths of the ravines, and terraces of rice cultivation, bright with the greenness of English lawns, run up to a great height among dark masses of upland forest. The populousness of the coast is very impressive, and the gulf everywhere was equally peopled with fishing-boats, of which we passed not only hundreds, but thousands, in five hours. ”

“ As the coast, then, is the border zone between the solid, inhabited land and the mobile, untenanted deep, two important factors in its history are the accessibility of its back country on the one hand, and the accessibility of the sea on the other. ”

“ A scarf of gray tops the sand bluffs of the opposite shore, and when the land looms, miragelike, scattered villages appear; or on certain clear evenings we may catch the twinkle of friendly lights. And in summer days when the languid creeks threading the marshlands add a brighter blue to the picture that throbs in the sun—water and sky and the dazzling collar of sand that yokes land and sea—the bay, seeming all but landlocked in its honey-colored bluffs, deceives us with a look of inland waters and lies as softly there as Long Pond among the hills. ”

“ Their summits are crowned with a slight shrubby vegetation, the bright verdure of which, separated from the dark blue colour of the sea by their glittering sandy beaches, formed a pleasing contrast to the dull, monotonous appearance of the mainland. These islets are in fact only the dry parts of a shoal, on which the sand has accumulated, and formed a soil to receive and nourish the seeds of plants, which have either been drifted on shore by the tide, or been brought by birds from the continent. ”

“ The sandy zone along the coast is nearly barren, but behind this is a more elevated region with broken surfaces and sandy soil which is amenable to cultivation and produces fruit and most tropical products when conditions are favourable. ”

“ A subsidence of the land adjacent to the sea permits an extension of the waters landward; the sea will enter the valleys so as to form estuaries, bays, straits, etc., while the high land between the partially water-filled depressions will rise above the water-level and appear as peninsulas, capes, and islands. A bold, deeply sculptured coast when depressed will give origin to an intricate, and what may be termed a ragged shore-line; while a lower region crossed by large river-valleys would be changed to a system of broad estuaries. ”

“ The effect produced by the contrast between the rugged, iron, sterile coast beheld from the sea, and the loveliness of deep blue water and summer islands richly wooded, and green hills sloping to the water’s edge, and sandy creeks, with the heavy bush to the right, and the tropical splendour of vegetation that meets the eye upon the outlying land—all which form the noble bay into which you pass through the narrowest and most repellent of headlands—is not to be described. ”

“ The shores are everywhere a maze of coves and inlets, in which land and water are interlaced; and over all—the mainland and the islands alike—the wild riot of tropical vegetation holds its sway, defying the efforts of man to tame it to trimness. Even within the limits of the city, which stretches for about four miles along the shore, four or five coves present a ceaseless variety of outline. ”

“ The confines of all these regions cross and merge into one another, at times, on account of the altitude in their different zones. The vegetation typical of one zone is often scattered through one or more neighbouring ones, so that they cannot be exactly defined. The greater or lesser altitude of a place often goes towards modifying the uniform character of the vegetation. ”

“ An intermediate region, between the palisaded or tenuous coast-line and these mysterious untenanted rents and time, wind and water worn ravines, revealed scenes more mild and radiant, wherein the apparel of nature was more colored, and where she bore those features of appropriate beauty where river and lake, forest land and flowered field unite in their abundance to appeal to the hearts of men. ”

“ The weather has scoured the coast—a thousand miles of it—as clean as an old bone: it is utterly sterile, save for a tuft or two of hardy grass and wide patches of crisp moss; bare gray rocks, low in the south, towering and craggy in the north, everywhere blasted by frost, lie in billowy hills between the froth and clammy mist of the sea and the starved forest at the edge of the inland wilderness. ”

“ In the temperate zone, again, the sun strikes the earth too much aslant. Human activities develop; intellect is keen; the balance of passion and reason is normally adjusted: but vegetation is slow and restricted. As compared with the productiveness of the tropics, the best that the temperate zone can do is scanty.
There are a few spots on the globe where the conditions of the country override these laws, and do away with these lines of discrimination in favors. Florida, Italy, the South of France and of Spain, a few islands, and South California complete the list. ”

“ In all directions there opened out innumerable channels, some narrow and winding, others straight and open, but all lying'-between shores clothed with a rich and luxuriant vegetation; shores that curved and twisted into mimic bays and tiny promontories, that rose in rocky masses abruptly from the water, that sloped down to meet the lake in gently swelling undulations, that seemed, in fine, to present in the compass of a single glance every varying feature of island scenery. ”

“ The western slopes, or those which face the ocean, are better supplied with moisture, and contain more vegetation, than the eastern slopes; and this increases as we approach the Pacific, along the coast of which, throughout the whole boundary of the United States to the Gulf of California, exists a border of land of delightful climate and of fertile soil, varying from 50 to 200 miles in width. ”

“ Most of our sea-side places of resort lie at the mouths of small valleys, which originally gave the fishermen easy access to the shore, and later on provided fairly level sites for building. At such places the fishermen will tell you of black peaty earth, with hazel-nuts, and often with tree-stumps still rooted in the soil, seen between tide-marks when the overlying sea-sand has been cleared away by some storm or unusually persistent wind. ”

“ Farther from the rivers the land is held to be suitable for agriculture and grazing. This tract of country stretches inland to the tablelands, where different conditions prevail, and which form the second climatic zone. The rainfall here is less than half that of the coastal area. The land rises to some fifteen hundred feet above the sea, and the sharp distinction between the wet and dry seasons is less strongly marked. In these tablelands, though there is a poor supply of surface water, subartesian water is available by shallow boring. ”

“ Changes in the Coast-Line due to Oscillation of the Land.—Land areas are exposed to the erosive action of wind, rain, streams, etc., and are sculptured by these agencies into valleys, cañons, peaks, ridges, and other familiar topographic forms. The various processes by which land areas are modified lead in general to a roughening of the surface. As an extreme illustration, a high plateau becomes dissected by streams so as to form an intricate system of rugged mountain ridges and peaks, with deep, steep-sided valleys between. ”

“ The first things that meet our eye at every station are large and splendid lawns, young plantations of palm trees and other plants characteristic of the Southern coast climate, flowers of brightest hue, all started by the enterprising immigrants who came here to buy climate, sun and air, and to enjoy the breakers and the ocean every day in the year. After Oceanside, we touch at Carlsbad and Del Mar, both seaside resorts with magnificent villas costing from twenty to forty thousand dollars each, and with fine but young plantations and gardens. ”

“ The whole Maritime Plain possesses a quiet but rich beauty. If the contours are gentle the colors are strong and varied. Along almost the whole seaboard runs a strip of links and downs, sometimes of pure drifting sand, sometimes of grass and sand together. ”

“ If we trace the north-west shore of the bay, from the Mount westward to Newlyn, the ebb tide leaves a large space uncovered; the sea sand is from one to two or three feet deep; and under this stratum of sand is found a black vegetable [17] mould, full of woodland detritus, such as the branches, leaves, and nuts of coppice wood, together with the roots and trunks of forest trees of large growth. All these are manifestly indigenous; and, from the freshness and preservation of some of the remains, the inundation of sand, as well as water, must have been sudden and simultaneous ”

“ The littoral area as defined is not a large haunt of life; it occupies only about 9 million square miles, a small fraction of the 197,000,000 of the whole earth's surface. But it is a very long haunt, some 150,000 miles, winding in and out by bay and fiord, estuary and creek. Where deep water comes close to cliffs there may be no shore at all; in other places the relatively shallow water, with seaweeds growing over the bottom, may extend outwards for miles. ”

“ What this region especially needs is a protection of woodland against the cold westerly and southwesterly winds to cooperate with the benign influence of the lake in other regards. The more forest to the south of this belt of shore-land the better. The more frequently blocks and belts of woodland intervene throughout its entire extent for immediate local shelter and a general screen against westerly winds, the better for the farming and fruit growing interests of this region. ”

“ On the blue background of the high coast they seem to float on silvery patches of calm water, arid and grey, or dark green and rounded like clumps of evergreen bushes, with the larger ones, a mile or two long, showing the outlines of ridges, ribs of grey rock under the dank mantle of matted leafage. Unknown to trade, to travel, almost to geography, the manner of life they harbour is an unsolved secret. There must be villages—settlements of fishermen at least—on the largest of them, and some communication with the world is probably kept up by native craft. ”

“ Inshore, a tract of sand-hills borders on the beach. Here and there a lagoon, more or less brackish, attracts the birds and hunters. A rough, undergrowth partially conceals the sand. The crouching, hardy live-oaks flourish singly or in thickets—the kind of wood for murderers to crawl among—and here and there the skirts of the forest extend downward from the hills with a floor of turf and long aisles of pine-trees hung with Spaniard’s Beard. ”

“ The country spreads into a succession of prairies, lakes, and copses, through which the traveller can ride with ease, safe from the badger-holes which form such an objectionable feature in more southern prairies. At times the river-bed fills up the entire bottom of the deep valley through which it runs; but more frequently a wooded terrace lies between the foot of the ridge and the brink of the water, or the land rises to the upper level in a series of rounded and less abrupt ascents. ”

“ The area above this point is known as the vadose zone, and below this point the area is the ground-water or phreatic zone.
Any farmer who has ever sunk a well knows how important it is that his well reach below the water table if he is to be assured a continuous supply of water. Well owners also know that the water table can rise or fall due to any of several natural causes, such as an abundance of rainfall for a few seasons, or any great lack of rainfall for an extended length of time. ”