A magical description of ephemeral islands rising and sinking with time and tide.  From Maxwell’s fine account of time spent on a Scottish island, anything but ephemeral. 

Sand bars as white as snow-drifts and jewelled with bright shells rise between the islands and vanish as though they had melted under the summer suns. 

Source: Gavin Maxwell, Ring of Bright Water (London: Penguin, 1974), p. 42

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