Page:Here and there in Yucatan - miscellanies (IA herethereinyucat00lepl 0).djvu/48

 Leaving the plantation we continued our way along the coast, seeking an entrance to a certain lake. Night overtook us before we found it; we therefore hauled our boat up on the beach, and sought shelter in a fisherman's deserted hut.

Next morning, after two hours' sailing, we found the channel by which we were to reach the lake. The boat had to be borne across the beach that there forms a sandbar, over which flows only a few inches of water, to the mouth of the creek. This was about five yards wide, and closed overhead by mangroves. The water proved to be only five feet deep, and with a swift current, as it was low tide, coming from the lake. We struggled forward for about an hour, cutting away the low boughs: as in that time we had only advanced a little more than half a mile, the idea of penetrating to the lake was abandoned. We therefore backed out of the channel and continued along the coast till we came to a place where the water was crystalline and shallow. A number of large conchs lay on the sandy bottom; we secured some and went ashore to breakfast.

The conch-shell is exceedingly hard, but large turtles, that abound in these waters, break them between their jaws without apparent effort. We