126 
present, though influences notoriously at work in the Solway might 
at any time reproduce them. 
In short, all that could have been necessary both to give Skin- 
burness pre-eminence as a port and finally to annihilate it, is 
approximately shown in the Admirality Chart of the Solway as it 
was forty years ago. ‘The main channel is there seen to run right 
across the centre of Cardurnock Flatts, as they now exist, and to 
pass quite close to the present Skinburness, and over what I have 
supposed to have been the site of the ancient port of that name. 
South of Skinburness the channel gets farther and farther away 
from the land, and everywhere but at that place there is a broad 
foreshore. Granting the existence of a similar state of things 
about the year 1300, it is evident that Skinburness must then have 
been the place most suitable for a port on the Solway. But, on 
the other hand, a slight easterly bend on the part of the estuary 
channel at Skinburness would have a destructive influence on the 
shore ; and the waves at high water would break with special force 
on the only part of the coast not protected by a broad flat foreshore. 
In addition, there would be, under the above circumstances, every 
possible facility for the removal of the eroded material from the 
bit of coast thus specially attacked. 
With what rapidity the sea can destroy a coast of soft materials 
like that of North Cumberland, where circumstances are favourable 
to destruction, as they would be, on the above supposition, at 
Skinburness, the coasts of Norfolk and Suffolk bear especial witness. 
And from the greater depth of the sea and much smaller breadth 
of foreshore off East Anglia the waste of land is enormously greater 
there than on the Solway, where indeed it is not likely to be 
noticeable except under special circumstances. But in East 
Anglia the destruction proceeds with comparative regularity, and 
its extent may be roughly calculated. While on the Solway, the 
results being largely influenced by the ever-shifting channels of the 
estuary, the changes in which are extremely rapid and sudden, a 
few years might suffice to convert an obscure village into a promising 
port, and again transform it to a desolate ruin. 
