348 Subsidence along the Sea-coast of New Jersey, 



wheat had been raised within SO years ; now it is liable to be 

 overrun by the tide, and cannot be cultivated. In the last 50 

 years this farm which is of perhaps 200 acres, has lost 50 acres, 

 part wood and part cultivated land, from this cause. 



At Dennisville, and indeed along the whole of the Bay shore 

 of Cape May, the same fact is to be observed. Wherever the 

 shores are low and the slopes gentle, the lower edges of the 

 woodlands and also scattering trees near the marsh are liable to 

 be killed by the tide, and every year shows advances of the 

 water upon the land by the dead trees which it leaves, — and 

 which are never replaced by a new growth of young timber, but 

 by salt marsh. 



On the sea-side of Cape May the shore is bolder and of course ^ 



the encroachments are less perceptible, but even here numerous 

 instances were related to me, by persons who had observed them, 

 of the killing of timber by the tide, — and on the west side of the 

 beaches I saw great numbers of dead red cedar trees still stand- 

 ing in the marsh ; the earth in which they grew covered by a 

 few inches of mud, — and liable to be overflowed by high tides. 

 The dying out of oak and other hard-wood timber was also 

 shown to me at Barnegat. On Squan Beach there is a consider- 

 able tract exposed at about half tide, from which the timber was 

 cut off sixty or seventy years ago, and the stumps are standin 

 yet At South Amboy on Raritan Bay I saw three or four dea 

 white oak trees, all that were left of a grove of 150 trees which 

 flourished there thirty or forty years ago. They were on a slope 

 which was formerly covered with grass, but the sandy gravel 

 has been driven in by the storms, — the grass and trees are killed, 

 Capt. Peterson an old inhabitant of Washington on the Earitan, 

 says that a portion of what is now salt marsh was formerly a 

 swamp ; and that a sandy point projecting into and partly cov- 

 ered by marsh was within his recollection covered with pine 

 trees. 



At Hempstead on Long Island, an old resident, !Mr, Valentine 

 Smith, informed me that he knew of an island, in his meado\v, 

 which was covered with trees since his recollection, but which is 

 now salt marsh ; and the highest part of the island is lower than 

 the surface of the meadow. 



The district of country where the principal part of my obser- 

 vations have been made is particularly favorable to the detection 

 of changes of level in the tide waters, on account of its low 

 shores, and its being so generally protected from the direct action 

 of the waves or of currents. Most of the Jersey shore ot 

 Delaware Bay and of the Atlantic is fringed by a strii3 of salt 

 marsh, in many places several miles wide. High tides flow over 

 these it is true ; but not to any considerable depth, so as to pro- 

 duce currents that could wear the upland, and they do not appear 





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