586 ENCROACHMENTS OF THE SEA. 
Coasts of Schleswig-Holstein, Holland, and France. 
On the islands on the coast of Schleswig-Holstein, the ad- 
vance of the sea has been more unequivocal and more rapid. 
Near the beginning of the last century, the dunes which had 
protected the western coast of the island of Sylt began to roll 
to the east, and the sea followed closely as they retired. In 
1757, the church of Rantum, a village upon that island, was 
obliged to be taken down in consequence of the advance of the 
sand-hills; in 1791, these hills had passed beyond its site, the 
waves had swallowed up its foundations, and the sea gained so 
rapidly, that, fifty years later, the spot where they lay was 
seven hundred feet from the shore.* 
The most prominent geological landmark on the coast of 
Holland is the Huis te Britten, Arz Rritannica, a fortress 
built by the Romans, in the time of Caligula, on the main 
land near the mouth of the Rhine. At the close of the seven- 
teenth century, the sea had advanced sixteen hundred paces 
beyond it. The older Dutch annalists record, with much pa- 
rade of numerical accuracy, frequent encroachments of the sea 
upon many parts of the Netherlandish coast. But though the 
general fact of an advance of the ocean upon the land is es- 
tablished beyond dispute, the precision of the measurements 
which have been given is open to question. Staring, however, 
who thinks the erosion of the coast much exaggerated by popu- 
lar geographers, admits a loss of more than a million and a 
half acres, chiefly worthless morass; + and it is certain that 
but for the resistance of man, but for his erection of dikes and 
protection of dunes, there would now be left of Holland little 
but the name. It is, as has been already seen, still a debated 
question among geologists whether the coast of Holland now 
is, and for centuries has been, subsiding. I believe most in- 
vestigators maintain the affirmative ; and if the fact is so, the 
* ANDRESEN, Om Klitformationen, pp. 68, 72. 
+ Voormaals en Thans, pp. 126, 170. 
