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Show 264 ENCROACHMENTS OF TilE SEA ON ... . which have swept away the old· town of Findhorn. On the coast of Kincardineshire, an illustration was afforded, at the close of the last century, of the effect of promontories in protecting a line of low shore. The village of .Mathc:s, two miles uth of Johnshaven, was built on an ancient shmgle beach, so . k rrh· protected by a projecting ledge of lnnestone roc . Is was quarried for lime to such an extent, that th~ sea b~oke thro~gh, and in 1795· carried away the whole VIllage m one mght, and penetrated one hundred an~ fifty yards inl~nd, whcr~ it has maintained its ground ever smce, the new village havmg been built farther inland on the new shore. In the Bay of Montrose we find the North Esk and the South Esk rivers pouring ~nnually into the sea large quantities of. sand and pebbles, yet they have formed no del~as; for the ~Ides scour out the channels, and the current, settmg across their m~uths, sweeps away all the materials. Considerable beds of shmgle, brouo-ht down by the North Esk, are seen along the beach. Proc~eding southwards, we find that at Arbroath, in Forfarshirc, which stands on a rock of red sandstone, gardens and houses have been carried away within the last thirty years by encroachments of the sea. It has become necessary to remove the lio-hthouses at the mouth of the estuary of the 'ray, in the same ~ounty, at Button Ness, which were built on a tract of blown sand, the sea having encroached for three-quarters of a mile. 'ld' f I A good illustration was afforded, during the ~UI mg ,o t 1e Bell Rock Lighthouse, at the mouth of the Fnth of ?- ay, of the power which currents in estuaries can exert at consider~ble depths, in scouring out the channel. Th.e Bell Rock IS a sunken reef, consisting of red sandstone, bemg from twelve to sixteen feet under the surface at high water, and about twelve miles from the main land. At the distance of one hundred yards there is a depth, in aU directions, of two or three fathoms a; }ow water. The perpendicular rise and fa11 of th.e sprino--tides is fifteen feet, and at neap-tides, eight feet; the1r velocity varying from one to three miles p~r hour. In 1807, during the erection of the lighthouse, s1x large blocks of granite which had been landed on the reef, were removed ~y the for~e of the sea, and thrown over a rising led~e t? the b~~~ tance of twelve or fifteen paces; and an anchor, weJghmg a .... 'l'IIE EAST COAST OF SCOTLAND. 265 f.l fl[ I cwt., was thrown up upon the rock* • Mr • Ste venson m or~1s us m.orcover, that drift-stones, measuring upwards ~f ~hirty cubi~. feet, or more than two tons weight, have, urmg storms, ueen often thrown upon the rock from the dee n~~ p A~ong the pro?fs that the sea has encroached both in the estu~nes of the ~ ay and Forth, may be mentioned t11e submarme forests whiCh have been traced for several m'l b D ] . 1 . 1 es y r. F emmg, a ong the margms of those estuaries on the north and south shores of. the county of Fife :j:. The alluvial tracts, ho'_Vever, on whi~h such .f<n·e~ts grow, generally occupy spaces whJCh may be said to be m dispute between the river and the sea, and to be alternately lost and won. Estuaries (a term which we confine to inlets entered both by rivers and tides of the sea) have a tendency .to. become silted up in parts; but the same tracts, after remammg dry, perhaps for thousands f . ]' bl ' 0 years, are. a~am 1a e to be overflowed, for they are always low, and, If mhabited, must generally be secured by artificial emha?kments. Meanwhile the sea devours, as it advances, the htgh as well as the low parts of the coast, breaking down, one after.anothe~, the rocky bulwarks which protect the mouths of estuari.es. 'I he changes of territory, therefore, within the general h.nc of coast are all of a subordinate nature, in no way tendmg t? arrest the march of the great ocean, nor to avert. the destmy eventually awaiting the whole region; they are hke the pet.ty wars and conquests of the independent s~ates and. repubhc~ of Greece, while the power of Macedon '\\as steadily pressmg on, and preparing to swallow up the whole. ?n ~he coast of l!"ife, at St. Andrew's, a tract of land whiCh mtervened between the castle of Cardinal Beaton and the sea h~s been eutirely swept away, as were the last remains ~t the Prwry o.f Crail, in the same county, in 1803. On both des ~f t~1e Frith of Forth, land has been consumed· at North dB erwtck .m p ar tI' cu 1a r, an d at N ew 11 aven, where an a' rsenal and h ockb, bmlt in the reign of James IV., in the fifteenth century as e~n overflowed. # Accotmt of the Ere~tion of the Bell Rock Lighthouse, p. 163. 1· Ed. Ph1l. Journ., vol. iii., p. 541 1820. + Quarterly Journal of Science, &c., No. XIII. new series, March 1 1830. |
