THE LESSONS OF GALVESTON 379 



New England, the sea-cliffs predominate; but along the flatter coasts, 

 like most of those along the Gulf, the bars — the keys of the vernacu- 

 lar — predominate, and are commonly separated from the mainland 

 b}' sounds ; so that everywhere the character of the shore is deter- 

 mined primarily by its height above tide, secondarily by the work 

 of waves and sea-currents in building bars and carving cliffs. Now 

 the imi)ortant })oint in connection with the bar or key is the fact 

 that it is built b}"" waves aided by the currents, so that its height and 

 breadth afford a fair measure of local wave-work — not of the idle rip- 

 ples of the calms, not even of the breakers of lesser storms, nor yet 

 of the great hurricanes happening b}^ at intervals of centuries, but of 

 the greater storms of current decades. So the crest of the key marks 

 the reach of the great but not phenomenal tempest, and its seaward 

 sloi)e gives some indication of tiie frequency of such storms, the 

 steeper slope attesting a more frequent wave-work ; while the effect 

 of the century-rare ty})hoon is rather to destroy than to build sym- 

 metric keys, such as those skirting our Gulf coast and some stretches 

 of the Atlantic shore thence northward. Other factors, including 

 customar}^ tides and prevailing winds, affect this sea-work ; but they 

 are subordinate. Thus, the elongated key on which the city of Gal- 

 veston stood was but a natural storm-record ; and it was merely by 

 chance of weather history that she so long survived. 



It is the business of the engineer and architect to look to founda- 

 tions, and to avoid the traditional house on the sand; but it is tlie 

 duty of the nature student to interpret natural records and guard 

 against the building of houses within reach of storm waves — still 

 more against Ijuilding on the storm-records tliemselves. Fortunatel}' 

 the students of nature are now legion ; the geologists and physical 

 geographers from Harvard and Stanford, C\)lumbia and Cornell, Yale 

 and Chicago, and a score of other institutions of modern learning are 

 diffusing actual knowledge with unprecedented rapidity; even the 

 more progressive public schools, like those of Washington during the 

 last lustrum, are substituting real knowledge for the husks of learn- 

 ing, and inculcating ideas of nature-work which will be of inestima- 

 ble value in guiding the location of cities and bridges, railways and 

 moles, with proper regard to natural conditions — and it is not too 

 much to hoi)e that every citizen of this enlightened land may soon 

 be able to interpret such simple and self-evident iuiture-j)roducts as 

 storm-built hars and keys, and that if he sees fit to build a wharf or 

 erect a warehouse on a storm-record he will do so with his eyes open, 



