394 



PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY. 



The Needles. 



the change it may have undergone. It is certain, however, that within a recent period 

 the sea has made such an impression upon the sands of Barrey, on the northern side of 

 the Tay, that the light-houses at the entrance of the river, which were formerly erected 

 at the southern extremity of Buttonness, have been from time to time removed about a 

 mile and a quarter farther northward, on account of the wasting and shifting of those 

 sandy shores, and that the spot on which the outer light-house stood in the seventeenth 

 century is now two or three fathoms under water, and is at least three quarters of a mile 

 within flood-mark. At the ancient town of Burghhead, to the north of the Spey, an old 

 fort or establishment of the Danes was built upon a sandstone cliff, which, according to 

 tradition, had a very considerable tract of land beyond it, but it is now washed by the 

 waves, and overhangs the sea. The old town of Findhorn has been destroyed by the 

 ocean, and the site of it is now overflowed by every tide. At Fort George, some of the 

 projecting bastions, formerly at a distance from the sea, are now in danger of being 

 undermined by the water. Similar destroying effects have been gradually produced by 

 oceanic action along the east coast of England. 



The Abbey of Whitby, at its first erection by Lady Hilda in 658, is reported to have 

 been a mile from the sea ; but the distance from the verge of Whitby east cliff to the nearest 

 part of the abbey, measured in the line of the transept, was found in 1816 to be little more 

 than 200 yards. Along the coast line of Yorkshire, from Bridlington Quay to Spurn Point, 

 the shore has no important inlet or projection, and consists of beds of clay, gravel, sand, 

 and chalk rubble ; and exposed to a strong current from the north, as well as to the 

 uncontrolled action of the waves, the annual devastation committed here is very extensive. 

 Of the villages of Auburn, Hartburn, and Hyde, in the Bay of Bridlington, only the 

 remembrance remains. Several places on the shore preserve, in the termination of their 

 names, a memorial of meres, or fresh-water lakes, once having existed in their neighbour 

 hood ; as Skipsea, Kilnsea, and Withernsea, the Scandinavian sjo signifying a lake ; but 

 the sea has broken into these meres, and absorbed them, though recesses on the shore seem 

 to mark the spots they once occupied. The mere at Hornsea still survives ; but this place, 

 which was once several miles inland, has been brought within half a mile of the water 

 edge, and the hamlet of Hornsea Beck been utterly destroyed. The waste of the coast 



