III.

On the Gulf side of these islands you may observe that the
trees--when there are any trees--all bend away from the sea; and,
even of bright, hot days when the wind sleeps, there is something
grotesquely pathetic in their look of agonized terror. A group
of oaks at Grande Isle I remember as especially suggestive: five
stooping silhouettes in line against the horizon, like fleeing
women with streaming garments and wind-blown hair,--bowing
grievously and thrusting out arms desperately northward as to
save themselves from falling. And they are being pursued
indeed;--for the sea is devouring the land. Many and many a mile
of ground has yielded to the tireless charging of Ocean's
cavalry: far out you can see, through a good glass, the
porpoises at play where of old the sugar-cane shook out its
million bannerets; and shark-fins now seam deep water above a
site where pigeons used to coo. Men build dikes; but the
besieging tides bring up their battering-rams--whole forests of
drift--huge trunks of water-oak and weighty cypress. Forever the
yellow Mississippi strives to build; forever the sea struggles to
destroy;--and amid their eternal strife the islands and the
promontories change shape, more slowly, but not less
fantastically, than the clouds of heaven.

And worthy of study are those wan battle-grounds where the woods
made their last brave stand against the irresistible
invasion,--usually at some long point of sea-marsh, widely
fringed with billowing sand. Just where the waves curl beyond