436 SAND-PLAINS OF BELGIUM. [April 



plant other than the bluish sand-oat, or some species of reeds or 

 rushes in the stagnant waters of sand below. If one climbs to the 

 top of a sand-hill, then the scene is completely changed: the boundless 

 sea stretches itself out before the eye ; its waves glimmer as a 

 white swelling on the shore. But even the sea shows here little 

 sign of life, as ships avoid these coasts, in which they only rarely 

 find a haven which can afford them shelter. On these quiet, 

 cheerless wastes, there is, however, dreadful life when the sea is 

 raised by a storm. 



" Long before tlie blast has reached the shore, there is heard 

 through the perfectly quiescent atmosphere the dash of the billows 

 rushing onwards, and man becomes aware, some hours before it 

 comes, that a hurricane is approaching; and the effects are seen while 

 the gale is still some ten miles distant, as the impulse is trans- 

 mitted much more rapidly by the dense waters of the sea than by 

 the attenuated air. When at length the merciless monster reaches 

 the land, it is next to impossible to stand upriglit, and any one 

 exposed on the summit of a precipitous broken dune, which the 

 wind has forced into this form, may be forced to seek shelter under 

 the vertical precipice of the wall. The storm now takes up the 

 sand from any high dune looking towards the sea, and bears it on- 

 wards with such force that it strikes upon the i'aee like the pricking 

 of needles. On all sides one is surrounded with clouds of sand. 

 The upheaved sea shows, so far as the eye can reach along the 

 whole coast, a line of waterfalls, on which wave on wave, er.cli 

 towering aloft 15 feet, one after another, dissolved themselves in 

 foam. Snow-white })alls of this foam are borne onward like sea- 

 gulls over the dunes to the inland beyond ; they cover also the 

 onlooker as with a network of spray, and forthwith face, hands, and 

 clothes feel as if covered with salt. It is difficult to convey by 

 description a definite and correct conception of the tossing and the 

 turmoil of such a deluge ; but when, by i-eflection and fancy, a 

 picture is obtained of the magnificent spectacle presented at times 

 by the sea and her dunes, the deep terrors of the scene, the indescrib- 

 able wastes, and the dead silence of a desert of .sand-dunes, there 

 may be, on the one hand, understood the attachment which the 

 inhabitants of a strand usually feel for these dunes, and,; on the 

 other hand, the melancholy romancie feeling produced by them on 

 strangers." 



In illustration of the force, sharpness, and power of the drifting 

 sand, it is stated by Herr Wessely, in a footnote, that if any one 

 chooses to mount the dunes to the west of the village AVesterland, on 

 the island of Sylt, he may see, in a pavilion which is erected half- 

 way up the dune, the whole surface of the window-panes so densely 



