EVILS FOLLOWING DESTRUCTION OF FOBESTS. 97 



moving and advancing, propelled inland. At first only 

 meadows and fields were covered by them, but soon the 

 inhabited places were threatened. 



' So early as the beginning of the last century the two 

 villages, Kleinvoglers and Schmergrube, were completely 

 buried, and the village Polski, with the exception of two 

 groups of houses, was covered up by the dunes which had 

 been set in movement. And at that time man had 

 learned so little as to how he might oppose his own 

 strength, knowledge, and power, to the devastating opera- 

 tions of the elements, that these devastations were regarded 

 with a stolid resignation as an unavoidable fatality. 



' About the middle of the century the dunes lying 

 nearer to Danzig [which is situated about four miles from 

 the Baltic], through the barbarous treatment to which 

 they had been subjected, and more especially in conse- 

 quence of the destruction of the woods upon them, began 

 to spread and to advance towards the fertile district 

 beyond, which occasioned no little trouble and anxiety. 

 More especially did they advance upon a forest of pine 

 trees belonging to the town of Danzig, four German miles 

 [or eighteen English miles] long, and year by year addi- 

 tional strips of this forest were buried under their masses 

 of sand. 



' The only means of help against the advancing tide of 

 sand which suggested itself to the people of that time 

 were erected on the ridges of the most advanced dunes, 

 consisted of hedges, of posts, and pine branches, which 

 with an expectation that they would arrest the sand to 

 seaward which was being put in movement, and so prevent 

 the further advance of the destructive march of the dunes 

 on the landwai'd districts beyond. This end was, how- 

 ever, by no means accomplished, because great masses of 

 sand accumulated before the fences, and on this account 

 again and again new fences required to be constructed 

 above the old ones, but the wind still bore a great deal of 

 sand over the fences, and though the evil might be dimin- 

 ished, it was in no way overcome. Moreover, the ever 



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