File:The continent we live on (1961) (20675578492).jpg

Title: The continent we live on
Identifier: continentweliveo00sandrich (find matches)
Year: 1961 (1960s)
Authors: Sanderson, Ivan Terence, 1911-1973
Subjects: Physical geography; Natural history
Publisher: New York : Random House
Contributing Library: New College of California
Digitizing Sponsor: Internet Archive

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Island, located off the Texas coast, is seventy miles long and is now connected with the mainland by a causeway and bridge at the southern end at the mouth of the Rio Grande so that cars can be driven its entire length along the beach. Third, inside this sandspit lies what is called the "Inland Waterway." This is a shallow paradise for fish and fishing birds, and it is dotted and sometimes filled with low sand or salt-grass-covered islands between which meander narrow channels. To the land- ward side of this inland stretch of water comes the coast line proper. This, the fourth belt or strip, alternates between vast open grass-covered marshes and bights with many creeks, chan- nels, and ponds, and stretches of sand beach rising to modest clifflike banks. These are old sand dunes. Some are covered with beautiful lush grass, whereas upon others stand continuous closed-canopy forests of evergreen oaks all leaning madly away from the sea and the wind. Their trunks are naked and very pale, and their lower limbs writhe like things possessed, while their dense, dark-green head foliage trails off landward like a semideflated air cushion. To landward of these marginal dunes lies the fifth coastal belt, which is the coastal plain, so called, known alternatively as the coastal prairies. These are not true prairies though in large part covered with very short grass. Upon them are many pools, ponds, and shallow lakes, and all about them meander dry chaparrals. Little groves of stunted gallery forest grow along the stream beds, and they are dotted with clumps of cactus, here mostly prickly pear, engulfed in herbs and thin-stemmed bushes and mesquite trees; there are also copses of stunted oaks and other trees. This country continues inland to the first low escarpment. Its soil is mostly sandy, with wedges of fine silt where rivers flow from the uplands. The same arrangement extends along the Mexican coast south of the Rio Grande delta, which forms a large open area of marshes and mud flats bounded on the seaward side by sand dunes. However, the South Scrub vegetation lacks grass even immediately behind the coast, the leaning oaks are scarcer, and the chaparrals grow in massed formation right down to the dunes, which are covered with creeping salt-resistant succulents. Salt marshes continue and are just as extensive. On the offshore sandspit there are dune grasses, but the sea grapes and the buttonwoods have here moved in from the islands beyond and sometimes form dense low masses where many colonies of birds breed. Beneath these may be dark, dank, bare, black mud. At the southern end of this stretch of coast the evidence of past hurri- canes often extends for miles inland in the form of ramparts of deadwood and other vegetable debris. The sand dunes all along the offshore side of the sandspit are very remarkable in that they lie in an evenly spaced rank, in echelon, all having their long axis running from northwest to southeast. They average about thirty to fifty feet in height and are held together with bunches of coarse grass. On the inner or Top left: The so-called Brown Pelican is. in its adult plum- age, a satiny gray bird with vivid white and yellow mark- ings. This species is maritime and is represented on both coasts. Top right: An American Avocet, a highly colorful wader that is now common over a large part of the South and West. It has a curiously upturned beak. Bottom: The Spoonbill appears in great flocks all around the Gulf coast. One of its chief nesting places is an island off the Texas shore.
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