30 SEA AND LAND 



sea until it has an area of only one or two square miles; it 

 seems doomed to complete (;ffaccment within another century. 

 So, too, the Goodwin Sands, now only a dangerous shoal at the 

 eastern end of the English Channel, probably was in the early 

 Christian centuries an island of soft rock which the sea wore 

 away until its waves closed o\-er the; place where; it had been. 

 If the . historic period of North America were as great as 

 that of Europe, we should doubtless have many instances of 

 such vanished lands. As it is, we can see that many capes 

 and isles on the northeastern shore of this continent are 

 impending on destruction. No Man's Land, a lonely island 

 of glacial drift on the Massachusetts shore, south of Martha's 

 Vineyard, is rapidly wasting before the attack of the stormy 

 sea to which it is exposed ; it seems likely that in less than a 

 century this shred of land will have disappeared. The same 

 is the case with Sable Island, near the entrance to the Gulf 

 of St. Lawrence, where the remnant of a mass of debris left 

 1)\- the last glacial period, probabl)- a portion of a frontal 

 moraine, is raj^idly giN'ing way before the waves and currents 

 which are carrying its sands to the neighboring deep sea. In 

 fact, all such islands are liable to very rapid destruction, for 

 the reason that the waves find less difficulty in removing the 

 debris than they do on the continental shores. Around an 

 island of inconsiderable size the debris is readily borne away 

 b\- the strong currents, and is quickl)- cast into deep water, 

 so that it does not, for any considerable time, obstruct the 

 work of the waves. On the long cf)ntinental strands, how- 

 ever, the waste from yielding cliffs does not so easily escape 

 from the shore ; the greater part of it is forced to creep 

 along the coastdine until it passes from the district of cliffs, 

 and finds its way into the pocket beaches. 



