558 



CUMBRIAN DELUGE. 



[Ch. XXL 



from east to west. 



a.smiAer from the 



mentioned 



The 



formed 



the sixteenth century, only sixteen geographical miles in cir- 

 cumference, and was still celebrated for its cultivation and 

 numerous population. After many losses, it still contained 

 9,000 inhabitants. At last, in the year 1634, on the even- 

 ing of the 11th of October, a flood passed over the whole 

 island, whereby 1,300 houses, with many churches, were lost; 

 50,000 head of cattle perished, and above 6,000 men. Three 

 small islets, one of them still called Northstrand, alone re- 

 mained, which are now continually wasting. 



The redundancy of river water in the Baltic, especially 

 during the melting of ice and snow in spring, causes in 

 general an outward current through the channel called the 

 Catteprat. But after an unusual continuance of north- 

 westerly gales, especially during the height of the spring- 



tides, the Atlantic rises, and pouring a flood of water into 

 the Baltic, commits dreadful devastations on the isles of the 

 Danish Archipelago. This current even acts, though with 

 diminished force, as far eastward as the vicinity of Dantzic. 



-x- 



Accounts written during 



the last ten centuries attest the 

 wearing down of promontories on the Danish coast, the 

 deepening of gulfs, the severing of peninsulas from the main- 

 land, and the waste of islands, while in several cases marsh 

 land, defended for centuries by dikes, has at last been over- 

 flowed, and thousands of the inhabitants whelmed in the 

 waves. Thus the island Barsoe, on the coast of Sleswick, 

 (see fig. 57) has lost, year after year, an acre at a time, and 

 the island Alsen suffers in like manner. 



Gimbrian deluge. — As we have already seen that during the 

 flood before mentioned, 6,000 men and 50,000 head of cattle 

 perished on Northstrand on the western coast of Jutland, we 

 are well prepared to find that this peninsula, the Cimbrica 

 Chersonesus of the ancients, has from a remote period been 

 the theatre of like catastrophes. Accordingly, Strabo re- 

 cords a story, although he treats it as an incredible fiction, 





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* See examples in Von Hoff, vol. i. p. 73, who cites Pisansky. 



