CHAPTER VIII 



SOUNDING SHORES 



Footprints 

 of the sea. 



Dover Cliff. 



Sandwich 

 bench. 



Along the shore where the restless pacing of 

 waves never ceases, only there are the foot- 

 prints of the sea. The crescent beaches, the 

 jagged coasts of honeycombed slate, the defiles 

 cut through granite, the channel ways leading 

 into lagoons and harbors — these are the blazed 

 trails of the waves. Destruction follows along 

 them; and yet, as we have seen, the sea some- 

 times builds up as well as pulls down. Since 

 Roman days she has harried and worn Dover 

 Cliff, scattering its sands far and wide ; but dur- 

 ing the intervening years, from other sources, 

 she has built up Sandwich beach and turned its 

 one-time harbor into dunes and meadows. 



Tbe sea began to slip away from the old 

 Cinque port many centuries ago. "WHien the 

 east wind blew across the North Sea, and the 

 waves rolled over Goodwin Sands, perhaps parts 

 of that shifting bed were carried inland and 

 heaped upon the Kentish beach ; when the west 

 wind blew perhaps it dried the sands and then 

 banked them into dunes that step by step fought 



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