158 



THE OPAL SEA 



Inundations 



from the 

 North Sea. 



into an arm of the North Sea. Inundations 

 along the Dutch coast have been frequent — at 

 one time destroying a hundred thousand lives, 

 at another submerging seventy-two villages. 

 And always creating new water ways. It was not 

 until the sixteenth century that the dykes were 

 so firmly constructed that the sea was finally 

 barred out from the northern jSTetherlands. 



Nor are the dunes always stationary, even 

 where free from the worry of the waves. The 

 sands are uneasy and keep traveling with the 

 wind, as the wind blows. Given a current of 

 air and a free passage-way, and they im- 

 mediately go winding like a golden snake, 

 pouring themselves upon some newly-formed 

 mound, which presently lifts into a dune. 

 Where the coast is very bare, quite unprotected 

 by heavy grasses, as along the Cape Cod por- 

 tion of the Massachusetts shore, the dunes are 

 continually blowing away — changing like a ka- 

 leidoscope into something new and strange every 

 few months. And in some places they have 

 proved as destructive to property as the waves. 

 Lege, a village near Bordeaux, has had its 

 church moved and rebuilt three times in mod- 

 ern days; and much of the village has been 

 destroyed by the inundating sands. Other vil- 

 lages along the coast have had similar experi- 



Travel of 

 the sand 

 dunes. 



Destruction 

 of villages 

 by anna. 



