DEAINING OF THE LAKE OF HAARLEM. 405 



agricultural domain of the Netherlands, between 1815 and 1858. 

 The most important of these undertakings was the draining of 

 the Lake of Haarlem, and for this purpose some of the most 

 powerful hydraulic engines ever constructed were designed and 

 executed.* The origin of this lake is unknown. It is supposed 

 by some geographers to be a part of an ancient bed of the Rhine, 

 the channel of which, as there is good reason to believe, has 

 undergone great changes since the Roman invasion of the JS'ether- 

 lands ; by others it is thought to have once formed an inland 

 marine channel, separated from the sea by a chain of low islands, 

 which the sand washed up by the tides has since connected with 

 the mainland and converted into a continuous line of coast. The 

 best authorities, however, find geological evidence that the surface 

 occupied by the lake was originally a marshy tract containing 

 within its limits little soKd ground, but many ponds and inlets, 

 and much floating as well as fixed fen. 



In consequence of the cutting of turf for fuel, and the destruc- 

 tion of the few trees and shrubs which held the loose soil together 

 with their roots, the ponds are supposed to have gradually extend- 

 ed themselves, until the action of the wind upon their enlarged 

 surface gave their waves sufficient force to overcome the resist- 

 ance of the feeble barriers which separated them, and to unite 

 them all into a single lake. Popular tradition, it is true, ascribes 

 the formation of the Lake of Haarlem to a single irruption of the 

 sea, at a remote period, and connects it with one or another of 

 the destructive inundations of which the Netherland chronicles 

 describe so many ; but on a map of the year 1531, a chain of four 

 smaller waters occupies nearly the ground afterwards covered by 

 the Lake of Haarlem, and they have most probably been united 

 by gradual encroachments resulting from the improvident prac- 

 tices above referred to, though no doubt the consummation may 

 have been hastened by floods, and by the neglect to maintain 

 dikes or by the intentional destruction of them in the long wars 

 of the sixteenth century. 



The Lake of Haarlem was a oody of water not far from fifteen 

 miles in length, by seven in greatest width, lying between the 



* The principal engine, of 500 horse-power, drove eleven pumps with a total 

 delivery of 31,000 cubic yards per hour. — Wild, Die Nederlande, i., p. 87 



