334 
INUNDATIONS IN THE NETHERLANDS. 
The almost continued prevalence of west winds npon both 
coasts of the German Ocean occasions a constant set of the 
currents of that sea to the east, and both for this reason and 
on account of the greater violence of storms from the former 
quarter, the English shores are much less exposed to invasion 
by the waves than those of the Netherlands and the provinces 
contiguous to them on the north. The old Netherlandish 
chronicles are filled with the most startling accounts of the 
damage done by the irruptions of the ocean, from west winds 
or extraordinarily high tides, at times long before any consid¬ 
erable extent of seacoast was diked. Several hundreds of these 
terrible inundations are recorded, and in very many of them 
the loss of human lives is estimated as high as one hundred 
thousand. It is impossible to doubt that there must be enor¬ 
mous exaggeration in these numbers; for, with all the reckless 
hardihood shown by men in braving the dangers and priva¬ 
tions attached by nature to their birthplace, it is inconceivable 
that so dense a population as such wholesale destruction of life 
supposes could find the means of subsistence, or content itself 
to dwell, on a territory liable, a dozen times in a century, to 
such fearful devastation. There can be no doubt, however, 
that the low continental shores of the German Ocean very fre¬ 
quently suffered immense injury from inundation by the sea, 
and it is natural, therefore, that the various arts of resistance 
to the encroachments of the ocean, and, finally, of aggressive 
warfare upon its domain, and of permanent conquest of its 
territory, should have been earlier studied and carried to 
higher perfection in the latter countries, than in England, 
which had much less to lose or to gain by the incursions or the 
retreat of the waters. 
Indeed, although the confinement of swelling rivers by 
artificial embankments is of great antiquity, 1 do not know 
that the defence or acquisition of land from the sea by diking 
was ever practised on a large scale until systematically under¬ 
taken by the Netherlander, a few centuries after the com¬ 
mencement of the Christian era. The silence of the Koman 
historians affords a strong presumption that this art was un- 
