206 A VISIT TO SABLE ISLAND 



honeysuckles, and whortleberry bushes. The great enemy to 

 vegetation is the cutting and stinging of wind-driven sand-blasts. 

 Their force may be known from the fact that many panes of glass 

 in the station buildings cease to be transparent, and become opaque 

 as frosted or ' ground ' glass. The effect of sand driven by wind 

 on wood is also most curious, the erosion often shaping a beam 

 as if it had been under the turning-lathe. The dry gales of August 

 are found to be destructive to many of the weaker shrubs. The 

 cluster pine that flourishes in Brittany seems so far to thrive in 

 Sable Island. The matting of the fallen foliage with the sand 

 may, it is hoped, give the banks a firmness which they do not now 

 possess, and go a long way towards averting the dread catastrophe 

 which some prophets of evil pronounce inevitable in the long run- 

 namely, the total submergence of the island beneath the surface 

 of the sea. 



Since 1852 the sea has encroached on the land and^covered 

 places where grass formerly grew. The west sand-bar changes 

 in size and shape with every severe storm. It still shows ordinarily 

 nine miles of heavy breakers succeeded in bad weather by seven 

 more miles where the depth increases from five to ten fathoms. 



Since the lighthouses were established in 1873, it has been 

 necessary to move the west end lighthouse eastward on two occa- 

 sions, and the continuous wasting of the west end will soon render 

 a third removal unavoidable. From a wreck-chart prepared in 

 Canada, it appears that the number of known wrecks on Sable 

 Island and its bars for each decennial period of the last century is 

 as follows : Ending 1810, eleven ; 1820, nine ; 1830, eighteen ; 1840, 

 twenty-five ; 1850, twenty ; 1860, twenty-three ; 1870, eighteen ; 

 1880, nineteen ; 1890, ten ; and 1900, twelve. 



Heaven help the shipwrecked sailor should the time ever arrive 

 when Sable Island will lapse into a mere treacherous shoal of quick- 

 sands, swept by furious and dangerous seas, with no human aid 

 possible for hapless castaway ! 



