1S6 THE 0CEA:N". 



wliicli is about 570 feet below the Red Sea.* While they occupied 

 the coast of Abyssinia during the last war, the English engineers 

 discovered another basin, dried up and completely covered with 

 salt, which was 189 feet below the sea-level. It is very probable, 

 too, that the depressions in which the great river Haouach loses it- 

 self to the south of the plateau of Habesch, are likewise below the 

 sea-level. The Isthmus of Suez formerly offered a phenomenon 

 similar to that of the bank of Tedjura. There, too, a lacustrine sheet, 

 which previously formed part of the sea, had been enclosed by the 

 littoral ridges, and had almost entirely evaporated. Only in our 

 days the grand inter-oceanic canal causes the marine waters to flow 

 again through this dried-up lake. The ancient banks on the shores 

 of the Mediterranean and the Red Sea, which the forces at work in 

 the interior of the planet had gradually elevated to the height of 

 several yards,t have been pierced by engineers, and an artificial 

 strait much more important for human progress than the great arm 

 of the sea was formerly, joins the Mediterranean with the Arabian 

 Gulf. 



If the great geological labours of the ocean, such as the erosion of 

 cliffs, the demolition of promontories, and the construction of new 

 shores, astonish the mind of man by their grandeur, on the other 

 hand, the thousand details of the strands and beaches charm by their 

 infinite grace and marvellous variety. All those innumerable phe- 

 nomena of the grain of sand and drop of water are produced by the 

 same causes which determine the great changes of the shore. At 

 the sight of the delicate lines which the dying wave traces on the 

 beach, as well as in the presence of the wild coasts which the surf 

 wears away in fury, we feel ourselves brought back by various im- 

 pressions to the contemplation of the same general laws. Each wave 

 accomplishes on its little portion of the shore a work similar to that 

 of the great ocean on the outline of all the continents. In a space 

 of only a few yards we can see the regular curves of small bays 

 round themselves, littoral ridges rise, inland lagunes form, and cliffs 

 of shells and fuci being eroded. At the extremity of certain shel- 

 tered bays, in the Bay of Beaulieu, near Nice, for example, black 

 masses of from 3 to 4 yards in height may be seen, cut ' into 

 peaks and pierced with caverns like rocks ; these are masses of algae. 



Among the various marvels of the shore nothing astonishes us 



* Rochet d'Hericourt, Voyage au Choa. Chiistoplie, Journal of the Geographical So' 

 ciety, vol. lii. 



t See in Vol. I. the section entitled, The Slow Oscillations oj tU Terrestrial Soil. 



