Word Finder - lagoons

definition

A shallow body of water separated from deeper sea by a bar.

Logwood forests fringe all the lagoons and many parts of the seaboard, which are flooded during the rainy season.

On each side of the town are lagoons.

In process of time some of these banks, as in the case of Venice, raised themselves above the level of the water and became the true shore-line, while behind them lay large surfaces of water, called lagoons, formed partly by the fresh water brought down by the rivers, partly by the salt-water tide which found its way in by the channels of the river mouths.

But it was inevitable that, when the barbarians, Lombard or Frank, were once established on the mainland of Italy, Venice should be brought first into trading and then into political relations with their near neighbours, who as masters of Italy also put forward a claim to sovereignty in the lagoons.

South of this point the coast curves outwards and is broken by peninsulas and indentations; to the north it is concave and bordered in many places by dunes and lagoons.

He and his followers plotted the murder of the doge, were discovered, and sought safety at the court of Charlemagne, where Fortunatus strongly urged the Franks to attack the lagoons.

Doria seized Chioggia as a base of operations and drew his fleet inside the lagoons.

On the llanos the dry season destroys the pasturage completely, dries up the small streams and lagoons, and compels many animals of semi-aquatic habits to aestivate.

Bird life is represented chiefly by migratory species, particularly of genera that inhabit the shores of streams and lagoons.

The shallow lagoons of the llanos, like those of the Argentine pampas, are favourite fishing grounds for these birds.

Behind the sandhills is a low-lying plain in which are a number of shallow lagoons.

Their mouths are blocked by sand bars, which in the dry season check their flow and produce the lagoons and marshes which characterize the coast.

Hippopotami are found on the coast, and alligators are common in the rivers and lagoons of the low country.

The former flows partly round its walls, the latter through the town; and it has canal communication with the lagoons.

It is traversed by several rivers, fed by the melting snows of the Andes and discharging into the swamps and lagoons in the S.E.

Here the reefs are generally less perfect than elsewhere, seldom forming complete central lagoons, and as they were formerly exposed to the constant attacks of the Mopla pirates from India, the people are hardier and more vigorous than their less warlike southern neighbours.

Back of the islands are the quiet waters of lagoons, and at the mouths of rivers are several shallow bays indenting the mainland; these bays were formed by only a slight subsidence of the land and the rivers are filling them with deposits of silt.

The shore is low, bordered in its eastern half with lagoons, and difficult of access on account of the submarine bar of sand which stretches along nearly the whole of the coast, and also because of the heavy surf caused by the great Atlantic billows.

The jealousy of the Aetolian militia for the Suliotes, however, prevented the victory being decisive; and Mustai advanced to the siege of Anatoliko, a little town in the lagoons near Missolonghi.

This resistance was rendered possible by the Greek command of the sea, Miaoulis from time to time entering the lagoons with supplies; it came to an end when this command was lost.

Fish are exceedingly abundant, especially in the lagoons of atolls, and form an important article of food supply for the natives, who are generally expert fishermen.

It is fringed, along the coasts, by low-lying marshes and lagoons, alternating with tracts of rich soil and wastes of sand.

Festschrift zum 70ten Geburtstage von Ernst Haeckel, 19(34) has restored the conditions existing in the lagoons and atoll reefs of the Jurassic sea of Solnhofen in Bavaria; he has traced the process of gradual accumulation of the coral mud now constituting the fine lithographic stones in the inter-reef region, and has recognized the periodic laying bare of the mud surfaces thus formed; he has determined the winds which carried the dust particles from the not far distant land and brought the insects from the adjacent Jurassic forests.

The two noteworthy depressions in its surface, the Valley of Mexico and Bolson de Mapimi, once contained large bodies of water, of which only small lakes and marshy lagoons now remain.

The lowland or tierra caliente region, which lies between the sierras and coast on both sides of Mexico, consists of a sandy zone of varying width along the shore-line, which is practically a tidewater plain broken by inland channels and lagoons, and a higher belt of land rising to an elevation of about 3000 ft.

They may be divided into two classes; those of the plateau region which occupy lacustrine depressions and receive the drainage of the surrounding country; and the tide-water lagoons of the coast formed by the building up of new sand beaches across the indentations in the coast-line.

The great Mapimi desert of western Coahuila is another lacustrine depression, but only marshy lagoons remain.

All these lagoons are navigable, and those of northern Vera Cruz and Tamaulipas, when connected and improved, will afford a safe inland route for some hundreds of miles along the coast.

There are a number of these lagoons on the Pacific coast - such as Superior and Inferior near Salina Cruz, Papacayo, near Acapulco, Cayutlan, near Manzanillo, and Tecapan in Tepicbut they are usually shallow, sometimes swampy, and have no value for commerce.

These lowland districts are densely forested in the south, except Yucatan, and large areas are covered with streams, swamps and lagoons, the abode of noxious insects, pestilential fevers and dysentery.

Alligators and crocodiles are numerous in the lagoons and rivers of the coast and the iguana is to be found everywhere throughout the tropical lowlands, the large black Ctenosura acanthinurus being partly arboreal in habit when full grown.

The coasts of Mexico, together with their accessible lagoons and rivers, afford innumerable breeding-places for turtles, which include the large green and tortoise-shell species.

The Huavis inhabit four small villages among the lagoons on the southern shore of Tehuantepec and have been classed by Belmar as belonging to the Maya stock.

The Aztecs from the 12th century appear to have migrated from place to place over the mountain-walled plateau of Anahuac, the country " by the water," so called from its salt lagoons, which is now known as the Valley of Mexico.

The shore lagoons are, however, rendered healthy by the ebb and flow of the tide, which is much more considerable than elsewhere in the Mediterranean.

When the Roman Empire fell the towns were many of them destroyed by Attila, and the inhabitants took refuge in the islands of the lagoons.

The eastern coast is fringed by long-stretching sand reefs, enclosing lagoons so narrow and continuous that they are popularly called rivers.

The mouth of the Adour has repeatedly shifted, its old bed being represented by the series of etangs and lagoons extending northward as far as the village of Vieux Boucau, 222 m.

It is fringed by alluvial deposits and lagoons, which are for the most part of very modern formation, for as late as the 4th or 5th centuries Aquileia was a great seaport.

There are large salt lagoons on the southern coast.

The Italian shore is generally low, merging, in the north-west, into the marshes and lagoons on either hand of the protruding delta of the river Po, the sediment of which has pushed forward the coast-line for several miles within historic times.

On islands within one of the lagoons opening from the Gulf of Venice, the city of that name has its unique situation.

The south-western plain, though rendered unhealthy by lagoons, and central Aetolia yield good crops of currants, vine, maize and tobacco, which are conveyed by railway from Agrinion and Anatolikon to the coast.

Thence again a low sandy shore of similar character, but with extensive shore lagoons which served in Roman times and serve still for fish-breeding, extends for about 24 m.

The league of Cambray had driven Venice back to her lagoons, and all the forces of the republic were concentrated on a struggle to the death with the allied powers of Europe.

The western shore, from the delta of the Volga to the mouth of the Kuma, a distance of 170 m., is gashed by thousands of narrow channels or lagoons, termed limans, from 12 to 30 m.

More than this, the Caspian was also, it is pretty certain, at the same epoch, and later, in direct communication with the Sea of Azov, no doubt by way of the Manych depression; for in the limans or lagoons of the Black Sea many faunal species exist which are not only identical with species that are found in the Caspian, but also many which, though not exactly identical, are closely allied.

These form the Cochin backwaters, which consist of shallow lagoons lying behind the beach-line and below its level.

During the rest of the year a large part of the country is a parched and barren desert, and much of the remainder swamps and lagoons.

The settled population lies entirely along the banks of these streams and the canals and lagoons westward of the Euphrates, between Kerbela and Nejef.