236 THE BRITISH ISLES. 



The coast district, which juts out like an eagle's b(?ak between Flamborough 

 Head and the estuary of the Ilumber, and terminates in Spurn Head, is known as 

 Ilolderness. The whole of this country is of recent formation, and differs alto- 

 gether from the rocky hills away in the interior. To geologists it is classic ground, 

 owino" to the grand scale on which it illustrates erosive phenomena. The boulder 

 clay and alluvial till form a sea-cliff, here rising to a height of some 60 feet, 

 and extendino- more than 80 miles along the coast. Landslips and "shoots" of 

 detached masses of rocks are frequent along this coast ; the waves undermine the 

 foot of the cliffs, and spread their triturated w^aste over the beach. Not a storm, 

 not an exceptionally high tide, but the coast is worn away, and houses, villages, 

 and even towns disappear. Ravenspur, at one time a rival to Hull, and a 

 port so considerable in 1332 that Edward Baliol and the confederated English 

 barons sailed from it with a great fleet to invade Scotland, has long since been 

 devoured by the merciless ocean. The villages of Hyde, Auburn, Kilnsea, Upsal, 

 and many others have shared the same fate ; and with them have disappeared 

 the lakes which formerly studded the plateau, and one of which, Sandley Mere, 

 filled a cavity in the alluvial soil abounding in the tusks of elephants. Extensive 

 sands, dry at low wat^r, occupy the places of these towns, but a tine rock, known 

 as the Matron, still marks the site where the cliffs rose within historic times.* 



A phenomenon of an inverse nature may be observed along the banks of the 

 Humber, where the waste of the cliffs of Holderness and the alluvial soil brought 

 down by the rivers cause the land and the banks in the estuary to grow. Sunk 

 Island, which about the middle of the seventeenth century had an area of only 

 10 acres, and was separated by a navigable channel, 1,600 yards wide, from the 

 shore, is now firmly attached to the mainland. It forms the apex of a peninsula, 

 12 square miles in extent, jutting out opposite Great Grimsby, and its rich 

 meadows are protected by dykes against the encroachments of the sea. Similarly 

 wide tracts formerly covered by the sea have become dry land along both banks of 

 the river above Hull, but there nature has been guided in her work by the genius 

 of man. The plain in which the Ouse and Trent mingle their waters was formerly 

 a lake, which extended in rear of the littoral ranges until it was drained by the 

 rivers named finding an outlet into the Humber. Above the swamps which then 

 took the place of the lake there rose the isles of Axholme, "Wroot, Crowle, and 

 others, and most of the inhabitants of the country established themselves upon 

 these more solid spots to escape the pestilential vapours rising from a half-drowned 

 country. Since the Middle Ages these swamps have been drained, and here, as in 

 the fenny land around the Wash, it was the Dutch who initiated the inhabitants 

 into the art of the hydraulic engineer. One of the principal drains is still known 

 as " Dutch River," and recalls the services rendered by these foreigners. The 

 whole of the country is intersected now by canals and drains, and it is difficult to trace 

 the old channels of the Don and Idle, which formerly flowed slowly through a 

 plain having no regular slope. One of the first objects of the engineers was to provide 

 a natural outfall for the rivers, and the alluvial soil brought down in large quan- 

 * Philiiips, '• Rivers, Mountains, and Sea- coast of Yorkshire ; " Pennant, "Arctic Zoology." 



