Mangle

“ But in the absence of an establishment of this sort, the housekeepers of a country village might help themselves very much by owning a mangle in common, to which all the heavier parts of the ironing could be sent. American ingenuity has greatly improved the machinery of the mangle. It is no longer the heavy, cumbersome structure that it used to be in the Old World, but a compact, neat piece of apparatus, made in three or four different sizes to suit different-sized apartments. ”

“ The mangrove abounds on nearly all the coasts of further India, and also on the sea margin of the Ganges Delta, in the backwaters of S. Malabar, and less luxuriantly on the Indus mouths.
1535.—"Of the Tree called Mangle.... These trees grow in places of mire, and on the shores of the sea, and of the rivers, and streams, and torrents that run into the sea. They are trees very strange to see ... they grow together in vast numbers, and many of their branches seem to turn down and change into roots ... ”

“ An interesting feature of the mangrove is the air-roots, erect or kneed branches of the roots, which project above the mud, and are provided with minute openings (stomata or lenticels) , into which the air passes and is then carried by means of passages in the soft spongy tissue to the roots which spread beneath the mud. The wood of some species is hard and durable, and the astringent bark is used in tanning. The fruit of the common mangrove, Rhizophora Mangle, is sweet and wholesome, and yields a light wine. ”

“ Construction of Mangles. Mangles are made of rollers rotating in the same direction, one moving faster than the other, set close together so that they press the clothes smooth, or they consist of one roller rotating over a stationary surface called a shoe (Fig. 93) .
Fig. 93. Mangle.
175. Cold Mangles. When no heater is attached to the shoe or one roller, the mangle is a cold mangle. It smoothes clothes, but does not do as good work as a heated mangle. ”

“ Both genera are universal in the tropical tidal estuaries of both Old World and New. Prof. Sayce, by an amusing slip, or oversight probably of somebody else's slip, quotes from Humboldt that "maize, mangle, hammock, canoe, tobacco, are all derived through the medium of the Spanish from the Haytian mahiz, mangle, hamaca, canoa, and tabaco." ”

“ There, amidst clothes-baskets and clothes, stripped up to his shirt-sleeves, but wearing still an old patched pair of pantaloons of superlative make, a once brilliant waistcoat, and moustache and whiskers as of yore, but lacking their lustrous dye—there, endeavouring to mollify the wrath of a buxom female—not the lawful Madame Mantalini, but the proprietress of the concern—and grinding meanwhile as if for very life at the mangle, whose creaking noise, mingled with her shrill tones, appeared almost to deafen him—there was the graceful, elegant, fascinating, and once dashing Mantalini. ”

“ Care and Use of Mangles. (1) Have the clothes damp before putting them thru the mangle. (2) Protect the mangle from dust at all times. (3) See that belts are properly [142] adjusted on mangles. (4) The covering put on mangle rollers must be of even thickness, or they will not do good work. (5) Do not mangle starched garments, or those on which are many or large buttons. (6) Wax the steel roller while it is warm, and wipe it clean with a cloth (Fig. 94) . (7) Always remove pressure when not using mangles. ”

“ Gr. ἀμυγδάλη is usually regarded as the ultimate source of these cognates.
Mange, Mangel, f., ‘mangle,’ from MidHG. mange, f., ‘machine for rolling woven stuffs, catapult’; comp. Du. mangel, equiv. to E. mangle. The origin of the word is sometimes ascribed, on account of the dial. forms Mande, Mandel, to the Sans. root manth, ‘to turn,’ which appears in OIc. mǫndull, ‘handle’ (espec. of a hand-mill) . Allied terms in Rom. show, however, that g in the word Mangel must be very old; Ital. mangano, ‘sling,’ OFr. mangoneau, ‘sling,’ whence MidE. mangonel. There is no Teut. type of the whole class ”

“ The literal meaning of his name is qui in matre tumescit vel praevalet, i.e. a boring-stick like the lightning.
794. In English mangle, substantive and verb. The verb mangle ‘to tear’ is probably the same, derived from the action of boring. To mantle—to winnow corn, to rave, to froth, may be from the same original root, represented by the Sanskrit, math, manth, in the sense ‘to shake.’ See Halliwell, Dict. of Archaic and Provincial Words. The Greek μόθος ‘tumult’ is connected with the same root by Gr. ”

“ Owing to the flatness of the country, the tide extends for a long way up the larger streams, and these rivers are everywhere bordered by an impenetrable mangrove swamp, in the lower reaches of the rivers composed almost exclusively of Rhizophora mangle, but higher up, where the salinity of the water is less, the Ehizophora is gradually replaced by Avicennia nitida, which sometimes becomes a large tree, whose aerial roots often develop from the upper branches and reach an enormous length. ”

“ A fine new Manglesia, to judge from its foliage, grows on the sloping bank of the river, immediately at the back of Mr. Tate's present residence, for he is not yet moved into his new house. This species is much like Tab. CCCXXXVII, of your Icones Plantarum; but with leaves more than twice as long and narrower, perfectly smooth, of a deep green and not glaucous, as in that species. It attains the size of a small tree, with a rough bark, very different in these respects from the one you have figured, which is a spreading bush, remarkable for its glaucous foliage and stems. ”

“ The last part of the drive on a road causewayed through the endless mangrove swamp impresses the imagination strongly by its dolefulness. Here are hundreds of square miles all along the coast nothing but swamp and slime, loaded with rank and useless vegetation, which has not even beauty to justify its existence, teeming with alligators, serpents, and other vengeful creatures. There is a mournfulness in seeing the pointed fruit of the mangrove drop down through the still air into the slime beneath, with the rootlet already formed of that which never fails to become a tree. ”

“ The children turned toward the Pelican among the mangrove trees, crowded with nests of egret and heron and rosy hornbill.
The shallow water of the lagoon ran into gold-tipped ripples. In every one the low sun laid a tiny flake of azure. Over the far shore there was a continual flick and flash of wings, like a whirlwind playing with a heap of waste paper. Crooked flights of flamingoes made a moving reflection on the water like a scarlet snake, but among the queer mangrove stems, that did not seem to know whether they were roots or branches, there was a lovely morning stillness. ”

“ As the boat is pulled between the glistening, green hedges of mangrove trees which line the sluggish, muddy water-way, even the hum of gnats and mosquitoes, the harsh cry of a bird, the snapping of the oysters and clams in the mud left uncovered by the receding tide, and the occasional splash of a big lizard dropping into the water, add to the solitude of the dismal waste. ”

“ I had not been many minutes in this sequestered and luxuriant place before the sounds of voices and of oars fell upon my ear, and then a long, low, half-decked boat, built like an Indian piragua, with her mast, yard, and sail laid flat, shot into the mangrove creek. Three men who were in her laid their oars on board, and by their hands urged their craft along under the luxuriant foliage and mangroves which almost concealed the water whereon they floated, and the long, giant, and wonderful plants that grew upward from the oozy bottom, and were brushed by the keel as it cleft their wavy masses. ”

“ This is a promontory covered with cocoa-palms, bananas, and small jungle growths. On either side are small rivers densely bordered by mangrove swamps. The first sight of a real mangrove swamp is an event. This mangi-mangi of the Malays (the Rhizophera mangil of botanists) has no beauty. All along this coast within access of tidal waters there is a belt of it many miles in breadth, dense, impenetrable, from forty to fifty feet high, as nearly level as may be, and of a dark, dull green. ”

“ The banks of the backwaters are lined with forests of white and red mangrove. When the tide is out, the cone-shaped root-work supporting each tree rises naked from the deep sea-ooze; parasitical oysters cluster over the trunks at water-level, and between the adults rise slender young shoots, tipped with bunches of brilliant green. The pure white sand is bound together by a kind of convolvulus, whose large fleshy leaves and lilac-coloured flowers creep along the loose soil. Where raised higher above the ocean level, the coast is a wall of verdure. ”

“ A mile or so further up the country than the Buccaneer settlement, the coast was low and marshy; the mangroves here grew in great abundance, and divers deep channels of salt water ran away from the main branch of the sea, and led, some of them, to great open savannahs, covered with rich grass, where the wild cattle loved to come and feed. One day, five of us started in a small pirogue, which could barely contain such a crew, to seek for bulls and cows in these swampy prairies—a Buccaneer called Walshe, who perfectly knew the mangrove canals, acting as pilot. ”

“ There was a little group of coral islands, decked with plumes of cocoa-nut palms, on the other side of the bay, close to a great mangrove swamp, and the Guardsman insisted on our hiring a boat and rowing out there, blazing though the sun was. These mangrove swamps are evil-looking places. The mangrove, the only tree, I believe, that actually grows in salt water, has unnaturally green leaves. The trees grow on things like stilts, digging their roots deep into the foul slime. ”

“ As they rise, the mangrove, the pioneer of such fertility as the sea deposits, hastens to maturity, clothing them with its mantle of never-fading green, and thus bestowing on these barren reefs the presence of vegetable life.
Our course now lay along the western foot of the curious headland just described, a rapid tide soon hurried us past its frowning shadows into a very winding channel scarcely half a mile wide, and more than 20 fathoms deep ”

“ Beyond that, further in towards the mountains, for a breadth of about 3 miles more or less, there is a tract of swampy mangrove land which runs all along between the sandy land of the shore on one side of it, and the feet of the mountains on the other. And this low mangrove land is overflown every tide of flood by the water that flows into it through several mouths or openings in the outer sandy skirt against the sea. We came to an anchor right against one of these openings; and presently I went in my boat to search for fresh water, or get speech of the natives ”

“ Floating with the current, with as little noise as possible, and having many a narrow escape of running against points of land and sandbanks, they flew swiftly towards the sea, so that dawn found them among the mud flats and the mangrove swamps. Here they found a spot where mangrove roots and bushes formed an impenetrable screen, behind which they spent the day, chiefly in sleep, and in absolute security. ”

“ Mangroves How do you survive in the mangrove swamps-- amid the twitchings of foetid water & lice thick as baby tears? How, with all the wallow of thick muck making suction noises and the teams in relays searching nightly with baited hounds, do you pull free? Your bamboo pole knows every ploy but a slender craft ill-equipped to sparring blows from every quarter the undergrowth necessitates. ”

“ A dense tangle of mangroves extends far out from the shore on both sides, over the water, completely concealing the actual land; the trunks rise from pyramids of exposed roots; from the branches, slender shoots, round-tipped, strike vertically down, penetrate the water, force their way into the soft, oozy mud of the river bottom, take root and aid in spreading the tangled growth still further out over the water. ”

“ Some stand on the mangroves of the solitary shore, now and then plunging into the water after a fish. Some go long journeys inland, up creeks and inlets. A few lonely old herons of solemn look and wing retire to favorite oaks. ”

“ As we were swept up the main opening by the tide and sea-breeze its width gradually contracted, till at last we came to a small island bearing a single large mangrove tree, which we named One Tree Island. The shores now became thickly wooded with mangroves, from the boughs of which depended in clusters small but well-flavoured oysters, and soon after passing the island we found our farther progress arrested by large rounded blocks of sandstone, from amongst which fresh water came pouring in a hundred little cascades. ”

“ Walker watched Hatteras. Hatteras watched the forest. A West African mangrove forest at night is full of the eeriest, queerest sounds that ever a man's ears harkened to. And the sounds come not so much from the birds, or the soughing of the branches; they seem to come from the swamp life underneath the branches, at the roots of trees. There's a ceaseless stir as of a myriad of reptiles creeping in the slime. Listen long enough and you will fancy that you hear the whirr and rush of innumerable crabs, the flapping of innumerable fish. ”

“ During their convalescence, I amused myself by shooting alligators in the mangrove swamps at Holland Bay, which was within half an hour’s ride of the bungalow. It was curious sport. The great saurians would lie motionless in the pools amidst the snake-like tangle of mangrove roots. They would float with just their eyes and noses out of water, but so still that, without a glass, (which I had not,) it was difficult to distinguish their heads from the countless roots and rotten logs around them. If one fired by mistake, the sport was spoiled for an hour to come. ”