48 SEASIDE DIVINITY. 



Jutland. In Brittany, near St. Pol de Leon, a 

 whole village was so entirely overwhelmed by the 

 sand that no remains of it were visible but the 

 spire of the village church. And on the shores 

 of Jutland large hillocks of sand and sea-shells, 

 intermingled with sea-weed, have been formed by 

 the violence of storms acting on the dry sands. 



The alterations thus produced in some districts 

 of our sea-shores are, although on a smaller scale, 

 scarcely less remarkable than those which have 

 been occasioned by the same causes in Egypt, 

 Lybia, and Peru. 



In Egypt many of the most fertile plains and 

 valleys which in distant ages teemed with a busy 

 population have been converted into arid wastes, 

 and many of the finest monuments of her ancient 

 grandeur have been overwhelmed by the sands of 

 the desert. On the western shores of the Nile, 

 the sands drifted by the winds have left no lands 

 capable of being cultivated but those which are 

 sheltered by the mountains ; and in Upper Egypt 

 whole districts are thus buried, and here and there 

 the ruins of cities and the summits of temples 

 may be seen, which have been thus overwhelmed. 

 Denon observes : " Nothing can be more melan- 

 choly than to walk over villages swallowed up by 

 the sand of the desert, to trample under foot 

 their roofs and minarets, and to reflect that yonder 

 were cultivated fields, that there grew trees, that 

 here were the dwellings of men, and that all have 

 now vanished. The sands of the desert were in 

 ancient times remote from Egypt ; and the oases, 



