PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY. 105 



which one was 160O feet high, have been thrown up by 

 volcanoes in Mexico. 



The action of the sea has evidently effected much in 

 the work of change ; it is slow in its operations, 

 but still it is constant. If we consider the alteration 

 made on the coast of England by this action, we shall 

 find it far from inconsiderable. In Yorkshire the sea 

 has for centuries been encroaching on the land, and 

 causing towns and islands to disappear.* Ravenspur 

 was, in the beginning of the fourteenth century, so con- 

 siderable a port, that the English Barons sailed from it 

 to invade Scotland ; it has long since been devoured by 

 the waters of the ocean. In Norfolk, towns have disap- 

 peared : as much as seventeen yards were swept away 

 on its coast between the year 1S24 and 1S29. The site 

 of the ancient Cromer is now in the German Ocean, the 

 inhabitants having been gradually driven inland. In 

 Suffolk the sea also continues to encroach. The Recul- 

 vers, on the Kentish coast, were, about 30O years ago, one 

 mile inland from the sea ; they are now close to the edge 

 of the cliff, and are preserved from being undermined 

 and washed away by artificial means. From the Recul- 

 vers to the North Foreland, the annual waste of land is 

 very considerable. All Sussex has been encroached on 

 by the sea. In the time of Elizabeth, Brighton was 

 under the cliffs. In 1665 there still remained more than 

 100 tenements, although many had been destroyed ; 

 at the commencement of the eighteenth century these 

 were all swept away, and not a vestige of them 

 remained. Generally throughout the whole of the 

 South of England, there has been a gradual loss Of 

 land. There was, no doubt, a time when England was a 

 Peninsula ; but, by the constant action of the sea, it ulti- 

 mately became severed from the Continent at the Straits 

 of Dover. It is conjectured that the Mediterranean Sea 

 was once a great lake, but through some cause the sea 

 rushed in, caused Deucalion's flood, separated Sicily 

 from Italy, and formed various islands. In Holland the 



* The rate of encroachment in some parts of this county, it is said, 

 amounts to four yards annually. 



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