1^8 



HISTOUY OF 



Stood by the sea-side, is now coiisidei'iibly removed from it. 

 But we need scarcely mention these, when we find that the 

 whole republic of Holland seems to be a conquest upon the sea 

 and in a manner rescued from its bosom. The surface of the 

 earth, in this country, is below the level of the bed of the sea , 

 and I remember, upon approaching the coast, to have looked 

 down upon it from the sea, as into a valley : however, it is every 

 day rising higher by the depositions made upon it by the sea, th <■ 

 Rhine, and the Meuse ; and those parts which formerly admit- 

 ted large men of war, are now kno\m to be too shallow to receive 

 ships of very moderate burthen.' The province of Jucatan, a 

 peninsula in the gulf of Mexico, was formerly a part of the sea. 

 This tract, which stretches out into the ocean a hundred leagues, 

 and which is above thirty broad, is every where, at a moderate 

 depth below the surface, composed of shells, which evince tliat 

 its land once formed the bed of the sea. In France, the town of 

 Aigues ]\Iortes was a port in the times of St Louis, which is 

 now removed more than four miles from the sea. Psalmodi, in 

 the same kingdom, was an island in the year 813, but is now 

 more than six miles from the shore. All along the coasts of 

 Norfolk, I am very well assured, that in the memory of man the 

 sea has gained fifty yards in some places, and has lost as much 

 in others. 



Thus innnerous, therefore, are the instances of new lands 

 having been produced from the sea, which, as we see, is brought 

 about two different ways ; first, by the waters raising banks of 

 sand and mud where their sediment is deposited.; and, secondly, 

 by their relinquishing the shore entirely, and leaving it unoccu- 

 pied to the industry of man. 



But as tlie sea has been thus known to recede from some lands, 

 so has it, by fatal experience, been found to encroach upon 

 others ; and probably these depredations on one part of the 

 shore, may account for their dereliction from another j for the 

 current which rested upon some certain bank having got an 

 egress in some other place, it no longer presses upon its fonner 

 bed, but pours all its stream into the new entrance; so that 

 every inundation of the sea may be attended with some corres- 

 pondent dereliction of another shore. 



1 Buffon, vol. vi. p. 124 



