402 CONSTEUCTION OF DIKES. 



ScHeswig and Holstein, where the people have less capital at 

 their command, they defend their embankments against ice and 

 the waves by a coating of twisted straw or reeds, which must be 

 renewed as often as once, sometimes twice, a year. The inhabit- 

 ants of these coasts call the chain of dikes " the golden border," 

 a name it well deserves, whether we suppose it to refer to its 

 enormous cost, or, as is more probable, to its immense value as a 

 protection to their fields and their firesides. 



When outlying flats are enclosed by building new embank- 

 ments, the old interior dikes are suffered to remain, both as an 

 additional security against the waves, and because the removal of 

 them would be expensive. They serve, also, as roads or cause- 

 ways, a purpose for which the embankments nearest the sea are 

 seldom employed, because the whole structure might be endan- 

 gered from the breaking of the turf by wheels and the hoofa 

 of horses. Where successive rows of dikes have been thus con- 

 structed, it is observed that the ground defended by the more 

 ancient embankments is lower than that embraced within the 

 newer enclosures, and this depression of level has been ascribed 

 to a general subsidence of the coast from geological causes ; * but 

 the better opinion seems to be that it is, in most cases, due merely 

 to the consolidation and settling of the earth from being more- 

 effectually dried, from the weight of the dikes, from the tread of 



of them. "Triple rows of piles of Scandinavian pine," says Wild, "have 

 been driven down along the coast of Friesland, where there are no dunes, for 

 a distance of one hundred and fifty miles. The piles are bound together by 

 strong cross-timbers and iron clamps, and the interstices filled with stones. 

 The ground adjacent to the piling is secured with fascines, and at exposed 

 points heavy blocks of stone are heaped up as an additional protection. The 

 earth-dike is built behind the mighty bulwark of this breakwater, and its foot 

 also is fortified with stones." .... "The great Helder dike is about five 

 miles long and forty feet vside at the top, along which runs a good road. It 

 slopes down two hundred feet into the sea, at an angle of forty degrees. The 

 highest waves do not reach the summit, the lowest always cover its base. At 

 certain distances, immense buttresses, of a height and width proportioned to 

 those of the dike, and even more strongly built, run several hundred feet out 

 into the rolling sea. This gigantic artificial coast is entirely composed of Nor- 

 wegian granite." — "WrLD, Die Niederlande, i., pp. 61, 62. 



* A similar subsidence of the surface is observed in the diked ground of the 

 Lincolnshire fens, where there is no reason to suspect a general depression 

 from geological causes. 



