THE GOOPWTN SANDS. 



the ocean as much surpasses all conception, as the number of 

 their inhabitants, or of the sands that line their shores. 



The boundaries of the ocean are not invariable ; while in 

 some parts it encroaches upon the land, in others it retreats 

 from the expanding coast. In many places we find the sea 

 perpetually gnawing and undermining cliffs and rocks; and 



Torso Rook, near Point Deaa Thomson, in the Arctic Ocean. 



sometimes swelling with sudden rage, it devours a broad expanse 

 of plain, and changes fertile meads into a dreary waste of 

 waters. The Goodwin Sands, notorious for the loss of many a 

 uoble vessel, were once a large tract Of low ground belonging to 

 Earl Groodwin, father of Harold, the last of our Saxon kings; and 

 being afterwards enjoyed by the monastery of St. Augustine at 

 Canterbury, the whole surface was drowned by the abbot's 

 neglect to repair the wall which defended it from the sea. In 

 spite of the endeavours of the Dutch to protect their flat land 

 by dykes against the inundatory waters, the storm-flood has 

 more than once burst through these artificial boundaries, and 

 converted large districts into inland seas. 



But the spaces which in this manner the dry land has gra- 

 dually or suddenly lost, or still loses, to the chafing ocean are 

 largely compensated for in other places, by the vast accumulations 



