304 RAMBLES OF A NATURALIST. 



day so many hills, which are scattered over the plain 

 in the same manner as they formerly appeared upon 

 the sea.* Maillezais, Marans, Velluire, Triaise, 

 Maille, Vildoux, and a dozen other villages or ham- 

 lets were surrounded by water even at as late a date as 

 the thirteenth century. We still meet at certain 

 points with posts having iron rings attached to them, 

 which formerly served to fasten boats and ships. 

 This movement has not diminished in our own times. 

 When Father Arcere wrote, a little less than a cen- 

 tury ago, there lay to the north of the bay an island 

 formed of steep rocks and known under the name of 

 La Dive. The annalist of La Rochelle remarks that 

 the Point of Aiguillon was advancing each year, and 

 that in a little while the lowlands would reach these 

 rocks. Fact has very speedily confirmed these pre- 

 dictions. In 1824, La Dive was in the midst of 

 fields, and the Point inclining southward was about 

 four kilometres in advance of it. 



From the facts and dates to which we have here 

 referred, it would seem that the gulf of Poitou 

 remained till towards the beginning of the middle 

 ages very nearly in the same condition in which it 

 had been left by the last cataclysms ; that is to say, 

 it remained open to the waves of the ocean for 

 several thousand years, and that, dating from some 

 undetermined although probably entirely modern 

 epoch, it began rapidly to be filled up. If this 



* From Eochefort the Charente has increased in the same 

 manner. From this point, as far as the sea, there extends a gulf, 

 one of whose arms, as I have already remarked, is directed north- 

 wards, and nearly joins the bay of Aigrefeuille. 



