CHAP, vii.] DRAINAGE OF THE DISTRICT. 329 



sand is stopped as it runs along the ground. And so a 

 natural mound is upraised, just above high-water mark, 

 capable of affording security to thousands of acres and 

 hundreds of human lives ; all through the agency of a 

 wiry, glaucous, sapless, good-for-nothing-looking weed. 

 Scores of people would stand on the Marram banks, 

 enjoy from their -elevation the glorious prospect of 

 glittering sea and fertile fields, and would pluck a 

 handfull of tiresome monotonous weed, and say " What 

 is the use of all this rubbish ? 'Tis good neither for 

 pasturage nor seed. Why don't they grub it up and 

 try if something better will not grow in its place?" 

 But when any failure of this sandy rampart does occur, 

 in what are called " Sea Breaches," great is the tribu- 

 lation among and something the rate upon the adjoin- 

 ing property. Bushes, faggots, hurdles, &c., are made 

 to do badly the delicate job of checking the blowing 

 sands, which before was so well performed by the 

 wretched much-despised weed. The wall of sand is 

 not like the wall of China ; it is cemented together by 

 a net- work of living fibres ; destroy them, and the 

 whole mass is blown to the winds, and the raging, 

 roaring enemy admitted in a briny deluge. 



The drainage of this Bittern preserve is as curious 

 as its sea boundary. Marsh-mills, i. e., pumps worked 

 by wind-power, raise the superfluous water into chan- 

 nels that are considerably elevated above the pastures 

 which they thus drain ; and the stagnant pools are in 

 this way made to run up hill, as it were, by a circuit- 

 ous route, and escape, contrary to apparent pos- 

 sibility, into the German Ocean, through the Haven's 

 mouth at Great Yarmouth. Its surface is sometimes 

 diversified by large shallow, and yet mostly bottomless 



