394 DIKES OF THE NETHEELANDS. 



Christian era. Tlie silence of the Roman historians affords a 

 strong presumption that this art was unknown to the inhabitants 

 of the Netherlands at the time of the Roman invasion, and the 

 elder Pliny's description of the mode of life along the coast which 

 has now been long diked in, applies precisely to the habits of the 

 peopl3 who live on the low islands and mainland flats lying out- 

 side of the chain of dikes, and wholly unprotected by embank- 

 ments of any sort. 



Origin of Seordikes. 



It has been conjectured, and not without probability, that the 

 causeways built by the Romans across the marshes of the Low 

 Countries, in their campaigns against the G-ermanic tribes, gave 

 the natives the first hint of the utility which might be derived 

 from similar constructions applied to a different purpose.* If 

 this is so, it is one of the most interesting among the many in- 

 stances in which the arts and enginery of war have been so modi- 

 fied as to be eminently promotive of the blessings of peace, there- 

 by in some measure compensating the wrongs and sufferings they 

 have inflicted on humanity, f The Lowlanders are beheved to 

 have secured some coast and bay islands by ring-dikes, and to 



* It has often been alleged by eminent writers that a part of the fens in Lin- 

 colnshire was reclaimed by sea-dikes under the government of the Romans. 

 I have found no ancient authority in support of this assertion, nor can I refer 

 to any passage in Roman literature in which sea-dikes are expressly mentioned 

 otherwise than as walls or piers, except that in Pliny {Hist. Nat., xxxvi. 24), 

 where it is said that the Tyrrhenian Sea was excluded from the Lucrine Lake 

 by dikes. Dugdale, whose enthusiasm for his subject led him to believe that 

 recovering from the sea land subject to be flooded by it, was of divine appoint- 

 ment, because God said : " Let the waters under the heaven be gathered to- 

 gether unto one place and let the dry land appear," unhesitatingly ascribes the 

 reclamation of the Lincolnshire fens to the Romans, though he is able to cite 

 but one authority, a passage in Tacitus's Life of Agricola, which certainly has 

 no such meaning, in support of the assertion. — History of Embankment and 

 Drainage, 2d edition, 1772. 



f It is worth mentioning, as an illustration of the applicability of military 

 instrumentalities to pacific art, that the sale of gunpowder in the United States 

 was smaller during the late rebellion than before, because the war caused the 

 suspension of many public and private improvements, in the execution of 

 which great quantities of powder were used for blasting. 



The same observation was made in France during the Crimean war, and it 



