Mangrove swamp

“ THAT day I did get into a mangrove swamp; a thick and oozy one, too, with the spiky orchids coming down in a waxen, odorous avalanche, and all sorts of thorny plants reaching down and out as if trying to rip the heart out of my body, as if trying to impede my progress, to keep me there. My hands and face were lacerated, my clothes torn, but I didn’t care. By main force, I jerked the canoe free and was off again, whipping the water like a madman; and the fear, the horror, the vague presentiment always growing! ”

“ By-and-by the country became quite flat, the elephant tracks ceased, and presently, as we neared a stream, we came to a mangrove swamp. It was almost like seeing an old friend, or, I may say, an old enemy, for the remembrances of mosquitoes, tedious navigation, and malaria which the mangrove tree brought to my mind were by no means pleasant. It is not very pleasant to be laid up with African fever, I assure you.
From a mangrove tree to a mangrove swamp and forest is but a step. They never stand alone. ”

“ A mangrove swamp is one of the most unpleasant things to cross, and, therefore, affords great protection to settlements built within its mazes. The mangrove tree always grows in salt or very brackish water, and its roots lift it several feet above the soil, allowing the tides to flow freely between them: at high water canoes can be pulled among the trees, but at low tide it presents a tangled but open bunch of roots to each separate tree, and it can only be passed by springing from one slippery root to another, and by the assistance of the branches. ”

“ 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. ”

“ We grated in, over a shallow bottom of pebbles interspersed with gray lumps of coral pulp, and of Botrylli, azure, crimson, and all the hues of the flower-garden; and landed on the bank of a mangrove swamp, bored everywhere with the holes of land-crabs. One glance showed how these swamps are formed: by that want of tide which is the curse of the West Indies.
At every valley mouth the beating of the waves tends all the year round to throw up a bank of sand and shingle, damming the land-water back to form a lagoon. ”

“ Struggling over and under endless trap-work, without footing on it or on the mud below, one must have sunk exhausted in an hour or two, to die of fatigue and heat, or chill and fever.
Let the mangrove foliage be as gay and green as it may—and it is gay and green—a mangrove swamp is a sad, ugly, evil place ”

“ 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. ”

“ In a moist hot climate, the less clothing the better; and in countries in which there are no roads, not many paths, and where, as a rule, progress is only possible through thick forest and over muddy ground, the fewer garments worn, the fewer there are to be cleaned at the end of an excursion.
For the first half-hour after leaving the village on Bertha Lagoon, the way ran across a mangrove swamp of soft mud, interspersed with pools of black-looking water, and studded with the peculiar and aggravating knobs that the roots of the mangrove bush delight to form. ”

“ The mangrove-formation comprises, it may be pointed out, many plants other than mangroves, plants that find a home in the mangrove-swamps of Fiji, either within their limits or at their borders. It presents, indeed, a world in itself. When the mangroves establish themselves in a new locality they carry along with them a host of hangers-on, both plants and animals, that only find a home under the favourable conditions of a mangrove-swamp. Thus, the absence of the mangrove-formation from a Pacific island deprives its littoral flora of many very striking features. ”

“ For it is no easy or cheap task to build a sure path through such a swamp. From a distance, forests of mangrove seemed to be massed on rising ground, and to group themselves about the sides and the crests of knolls. As a matter of fact, the presence of a mangrove forest is a sign of the very lowest ground, ground covered for the most part by salt tidewater. The lowest pine barren is higher than the loftiest mangrove wilderness.
Gavin Brice's aspect of lassitude dropped from him like an outworn garment. ”

“ On the southern bank of the Kasai, about two days up-stream, there was a large mangrove swamp, and it was beyond this that the "Hidden River" lay.
"Can you pass through the swamp in a canoe?" asked Crouch.
The chief shook his head, and said that a canoe could pass the mangrove swamp, but it could not penetrate far up the river, because of a great waterfall, where the water fell hundreds of feet between huge pillars of rock.
"One can carry a canoe," said Crouch.
"Perhaps," said M'Wané, as if in doubt. "But, of those that pass the cataract, none come back alive." ”

“ Of little present economic value are the vast mangrove, swamp, and savannah jungles which thickly fringe the coast and tidal streams, abounding in dense bushes, creepers, elephant grasses, and reeds. The mangrove jungle of Hanthawaddy, which may be regarded as typical of the Delta
is characterized specially by Bruguiera and Rhizophora. Behind these forests and along the borders of tidal channels are the tidal forests, the most characteristic trees of which are Sonneratia apetala and Avicennia tomentosa. These forests have a thick scrubby growth, similar to that of the mangrove forests. ”

“ To the mangrove-formation belong the Asiatic and the American species of Rhizophora, and species of Bruguiera, Carapa, Lumnitzera, &c. Amongst the trees that gather around the borders of the mangrove-swamp, constituting the intermediate formation, occur Barringtonia racemosa, Excæcaria Agallocha, Heritiera littoralis, Hibiscus tiliaceus, and several other species, all of them being equally at home on the sandy beach, at the border 44of a mangrove-swamp, and on the banks of an estuary. ”

“ Steep ranges surround this basin, and the whole was then covered with light bush. Half a mile in front is a mangrove swamp, beyond which flows the river—the mangroves filling up a space that without them [Pg 120] would have been an open bay. The prospect in this direction is bounded by the forest-clothed ranges on the opposite side of the river, which is here about a mile in breadth. The land within the basin is nothing like level, and English farmers might be frightened at its ruggedness. ”

“ In some places the mangroves grow so closely together that to traverse them is a matter of perfect ease, and Mr. Earle remarks that he once saw a file of marines, with shouldered arms, making their way thus over a mangrove swamp.
The familiarity of these people with the trees causes them to look upon a tree as a natural fortress, and as soon as explorers succeeded in reaching the villages, the natives invariably made off, and climbed into the trees that surrounded the villages. ”

“ As so much of the coast is mangrove swamp, and the animals do not risk going through the mud, they are only able to cross where the shores are sandy, and thus they have regular starting- and landing-places. ”

“ Orban bracingly.
At the same time he whipped up his horse and hurried forward. He was regretting having brought Eustace. A mangrove swamp is an unhealthy spot at the best of times, productive of a great deal of malarial fever; it would be nightfall, he reflected, before they got back, and the mist would be rising.
Away and away out into the open the pair galloped, and came to the side of the creek—the bend in the river through which the horses had to wade. ”

“ The light of day is subdued into a depressing gloom by the foliage of the mangrove forest: the air, charged with the miasma of decaying vegetable life, is impregnated with a sour, unpleasant odour; and the silence that prevails is interrupted only by the fall of a branch, or by the startled cry of some wading-bird disturbed in its haunt. Nipa palms line the banks in places, and occasionally occupy the swamp for some distance on either side of the stream. ”

“ This sheltered bay is dotted with small mangrove islands which toward the head of the bay become so numerous as virtually to convert it into a mangrove swamp. The water is shallow and discolored with organic matter, showing that the tide does not exercise much influence here, and the bottom is for the most part a black mud, deep enough to make wading very uncomfortable but not impossible near shore. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The outer fringe of the delta is composed entirely of mangrove swamps, whose skeleton-like roots rise up from the mud as the tide recedes, and from whose bark the natives obtain, by burning, a substitute for salt. For untold centuries the mangrove would appear to have been encroaching upon the sea, the advance guard of more substantial vegetation springing up behind it with the gradual increase of deposits affording root-depth. ”

“ It is obvious that among the primitive peoples a man must acquire proprietary rights over land upon which he has expended labour.
Besides man, there is another agent at work in reclaiming land in the mangrove swamp, which extended from the [Pg 370] present coast-line to about two miles below Nausori, where islands are raised a few inches above high-water mark. These were the haunt of a burrowing crayfish, called the mana, which plays the same part in the swamps as do the earth-worms in the grass land in England. ”

“ It is practically impossible for anyone to make their way by land through the mangrove swamps. Beyond the mangroves, before the land rises into mountains, is a stretch of sandy country sparsely clothed with a tree which Dampier describes as a pine, which was more probably the Casuarina. ”

“ No one, of course, would ever willingly reside in mangrove swamps, and the mangroves themselves are of scarcely any use to man, although the bark does sometimes furnish a useful tanning material; but, indirectly, the mangroves are one of the most important of all Nature's geographical agents.
On those horrible, slimy, shifting mudbanks no other plants could manage to exist. If one looks carefully at the seaward side of the last of the mangrove swamps, then it is easy to see that they are colonizing and reclaiming the mud. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Undergrowth is least here so that we are tempted to turn East or West where the walking is easy.
We move on to swamp forest again and see the pattern repeating itself, but with variations: the further North, the older the forest and therefore the more diverse. In some places the swamps are wide enough and deep enough to form a lake or swamp, and in others a salt-water creek might intrude with mangrove forest. The sand ridge is so wide that there is a substantial forest with a range of high trees, whilst in others it is so narrow that it is barely distinguishable from the neighbouring swamp. ”

“ 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. ”

“ One large snail always climbed out of the water to deposit its beautiful rose-pink cluster of eggs on the stems of plants. Around the margins of the swamps there were many land crabs, snakes and peculiar engistomatid| toads. Tropical swamps constitute an admirable habitat for many animals. The abundant vegetation and small animals fill the water with an organic network which supports many larger predaceous animals such as fish, herons, ducks, jacanas and snipe.
Mangrove Swamps
Mangroves are found only along the muddy shores of salt or brackish water in the tropics. ”

“ The artificial regeneration of the mangrove has been undertaken during the past three years in the Coringa reserve, a valuable swamp forest about twelve miles from the important fire wood market at Cocanada. Natural reproduction is hindered by the unsuitability of the ground under the trees, which, being raised year after year by silt, becomes hard and dry during the season (the north-east monsoon) when the seed falls, and allows the seed to be carried away by the tide before it can take root. ”