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Show 290 DESTRUCTION Oll' NORTIISTR.AND BY THE SEA. Jutland will become an island, and the ocean will obtain a more direct entrance into the Baltic. . . Northstrand up to the year 1!il40, was, w1th the Islands Sy1t and Foln:, so nearly connected with the .main land ~s to ... pcn1'nsula and was called North Friesland, a htghly appear" ' . lt. vatcd and populous district. It measured from mne to CU I h d , , h el even bO 'eob araphical miles from north to• soudt , an .s ix to eig t from cast to west. In the above-ment10ne year 1t was torn asunder from the continent, and in part overwhelmed. The 1 1 of Northstrand, thus formed, was, towards the end of the si~~eenth century, only four geographical miles in circumference, d was still celebrated for its cultivation and numerous popu-] aant ion. After many losses, it still con tam· ed m·n e t l1 ?usan d I·n - habitants. At last, in the year 1634, on the evemng of the 11th of October, a flood passed over the whole island, whereby one thousand three hundred houses, with many churches, were lost. fifty thousand head of cattle perished, and above six tho~sand men. Three small isles, one of them still called Northstrand, alone remained, which are now continually wasting. . . A review of the ravaO'eS committed durmg the last two thou-sand years on the Fren~h, Dutch, and Danish ~oasts, naturally leads us to inquire how it happened that the Rhme was enabled, at some former period, to accumulate so large~ delta. We might, perhaps, in reply to this question, repeat ou: for~er observation, that the set of tides and currents necessanl~ va.n:s from time to time; and that different coasts become, each m thetr turn, exposed to their fury, and then ~gain restored to a state of quiescence. Islands and promontones, more?ver, may hav~ di sappeared, which once protected the present s~te of Holland, and that reO'ion may afterwards have been lmd open, as the Baltic would be, if the ocean, by renewing its attacks, should finally breach the isthmus by Sleswick. It may also be suggested that if, in former times, the Straits of Dover were closed, the Rhine must have entered at the bottom of a deep bay, on the one side of which was Great Britain, and on the other the coasts of Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands, and France. The transporting power of the current might then ha~e bee~ much inferior to that afterwards exerted, when the tlde ra freely through the channel. Pliny expressed his wonder that COAST OF AMERICA UNDERMINED, 291 the ne~ lands at the mouths of the Tigris and Euphrates grew so raptdly, and "that the fluviatile matter was not swept away by th~ tide, which penetrated far above the tracts where great accessiOns were rnad e *." Th e remark proves that he had con-sidered the different condition of rivers in inland seas and those discharging their waters into the ocean ; but he dici not reflect, that at the bottom of a deep bay where there is no current setting across the river's mouth, the ebbing and flowing o~ the waters cannot remove the sedimentary matter to a great distance. After so many authentic details respectina the destruction of the coast in parts of Europe best known, it will be unnccessar~ to multiply examples of analogous changes in more distant regwns of the world. It must not, however, be imagined that our own seas form any exception to the general rule. Thus, for example, if we pass over to the Eastern coast of North America, where the tides rise to a great elevation, we find many facts attesting the incessant demolition of land. At Cape May, for example, on the north side of Delaware Bay, in the Umted .states, the encroachment of the sea was shown by observatwns made consecutively for sixteen years, from 1804 to 189l0, to average above nine feet a yearf ; and at Sullivan's Island, which lies on the north side of the entrance of the harbour of Charlestown, in South Carolina, the sea carried away a quarter of a mile of ]and in three years ending in 1786t. ' Of oceanic deltas in general, it may be said that, even where they advance, a large portion of the sediment is carried a.wny by the movements of the sea. In the case of the great rtver of Amazons, the effects of the tides are still sensible at t~1e Straits of Pauxis, five hundred miles from the sea, after an m.terval of several days spent in their passage up. The ponchn? back, therefore, of this great body of fresh-water, and the r~sistance opposed by the spring-tides to its descent, cause a rapid acceleration during the ebb, whereby the sediment is M* ." N. e c u.l la m· par t e P1 u s aut celerm· s profecere terrm flnminibus invcctro. N atgtYl'btd ~mrum est, restu longc ultra id accedente non "repercussns."-Ilist. a., 1 • v1., c. 27. ' t New Monthly Mag,, vol, vi., P• 69. ++ IIo ."a!' vo 1. 1· ., p. n;] 6 • t72 |