552 



INROADS OF THE SEA IN HOLLAND. 



[Cii. XXI. 



the fact, that the tract between Antwerp and Nieuport, 

 shaded black in the map (fig. 55, p. 549), although now 

 dry land, and supporting a large population, has, within the 

 historical period, been covered with the sea. This region, 

 however, consisted, in the 



marshes, and peat-mosses, protected from the ocean by a 

 chain of sandy dunes, which were afterwards broken through 



in the time of the Re 

 mosses, protected from 



storms 



The waters 



of the sea during these irruptions threw down upon the 

 barren peat a horizontal bed of fertile clay, which is in some 

 places three yards thick, full of recent shells and works of 

 art. The inhabitants, by the aid of embankments and the 

 sand dunes of the coast, have succeeded, although not with- 

 out frequent disasters, in defending the soil thus raised by 

 the marine deposit."* 



In 1853, 



Government 



dry, by means of 



steam power, a great sheet of water westward of Amsterdam, 

 formerly called the lake of Haarlem, and so represented in 



our map h (fig. 55), extending over 45,000 acres. This gained 



land lies thirteen feet beneath the main level of the ocean ; 

 and in 1859, when I visited it, supported an agricultural 



t 



>/ 



— If we pass to the north- 



ward of the territory just alluded to, and cross the Scheldt, 

 we find that between the fourteenth and eighteenth centu- 

 ries parts of the islands Walcheren and Beveland were swept 



;and — losses which 



of Kad 



far more than counterbalance the gain of land caused by the 

 sanding up of some pre-existing creeks. In 1658 the island 



Orisant was annihilated. One 



most memor 



roads of the sea occurred in 1421, when the tide, pouring 



mouth of the united Meuse 



dam 



overflowed seventy-two villages, forming a large sheet of 



water called the Bies Bosch. (See map, fig. 55.) Thirty- 

 five of the villages were irretrievably lost, and no vestige, 



* Belpaire, Mem. de l'Acad. Roy. de 



f For a fuller description of this 



Bruxelles, torn. x. 1837. Dumont, Bui- drained tract, See Lyell's Antiquity ol 



letin of the same Sue. torn. v. p. 613. 



Man, p. 147. 





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