DKAINING OF THE ZUIDERZEE. 411 



enlts of thiG improvement would be analogous to those of the 

 draining of tlie Lake of Haarlem, but many times multiplied in 

 extent, and its meteorological effects, though perhaps not per- 

 ceptible on the coast, could hardly fail to be appreciable in the 

 interior of Holland. 



The bearing of the works I have noticed, and of others similar 

 in character, upon the social and moral, as well as the purely 

 economical, interests of the people of the IS^etherlands, has in- 

 duced me to describe them more in detail than the general pur- 

 pose of this volume may be thought to justify ; but if we con- 

 sider them simply from a geogi'aphical point of view, we shall 

 find that they are possessed of no small importance as modifica- 

 tions of the natural condition of terrestrial surface. There is 

 good reason to beheve that before the establishment of a partially 

 civilized race upon the territory now occupied by Dutch, Frisic 

 and Low German communities, the grounds not exposed to inun- 

 dation were overgrown with dense woods ; that the lowlands be- 

 tween these forests and the sea-coasts were marshes, covered and 

 partially solidified by a thick matting of peat-plants and shrubs 

 interspersed with trees ; and that even the sand-dunes of the 

 shore were protected by a vegetable growth which, in a great 

 measure, prevented the drifting and translocation of them. 



The present causes of river and coast erosion existed, indeed, 

 at the period in question; but some of them must have acted 

 with less intensity, there were strong natural safeguards against 

 the influence of marine and fresh-water currents, and the con- 

 flicting tendencies had arrived at a condition of approximate 

 equilibrium which permitted but slow and gradual changes in 

 the face of nature. The destruction of the forests around the 

 sources and along the valleys of the rivers, by man, gave them a 

 more torrential character. The felling of the trees, and the ex- 

 tirpation of the shrubbery upon the fens by domestic cattle, de- 

 prived the surface of its cohesion and consistence ; and the cutting 

 of peat for fuel opened cavities in it, which, filling at once with 



from 400,000 acres. The construction of the ship-canal directly from Amster- 

 dam to the North Sea, lately executed, involved the draining of the Ij, a 

 nearly land-locked basin communicating with the Zuiderzee and covering more 

 than 13,000 acres. See official reports on this subject in Droogmaking van het 

 zuidclyk gedeelte der Zuiderzee, te s' Gravenhage, 1868, 4to. 



