340 
ORIGIN OF THE NETHERLAND DIKES. 
century these islands were much smaller and more numerous 
than at present. They have been gradually enlarged, and, in 
several instances, at last connected by the extension of their 
system of dikes. Walcheren is formed of ten islets united into 
one about the end of the fourteenth century. At the middle 
of the fifteenth century, Goeree and Overflakkee consisted of 
separate islands, containing altogether about ten thousand 
acres; by means of above sixty successive advances of the 
dikes, they have been brought to compose a single island, 
whose area is not less than sixty thousand acres.'* 
In the Netherlands—which the first Napoleon character¬ 
ized as a deposit of the Rhine, and as, therefore, by natural 
law, rightfully the property of him who controlled the sources 
of that great river—and on the adjacent Frisic, Low German 
and Danish shores and islands, sea and river dikes have been 
constructed on a grander and more imposing scale than in any 
other country. The whole economy of the art has been there 
most thoroughly studied, and the literature of the subject is 
very extensive. For my present aim, which is concerned with 
results rather than with processes, it is not worth while to refer 
to professional treatises, and I shall content myself with pre¬ 
senting such information as-can be gathered from works of a 
more popular character.f 
The superior strata of the lowlands upon and near the 
coast are, as we have seen, principally composed of soil 
* Staring, Voormaals en Thans, p. 152. Kohl states that the peninsula 
of Diksand on the coast of Holstein consisted, at the close of the last cen¬ 
tury, of several islands measuring together less than five thousand acres. 
In 1837 they had been connected with the mainland, and had nearly 
doubled in area.— Tnseln u. Marschen Schlesio. Holst., iii, p. 262. 
f The most instructive and entertaining of tourists, J. G-. Kohl—so 
aptly characterized by Davies as the “ Herodotus of modern Europe ”— 
furnishes a great amount of interesting information on the dikes of the Low 
German seacoast, in his Inseln und Marschen der Herzogthumer Schleswig 
und Holstein. I am acquainted with no popular work on this subject 
which the reader can consult with greater profit. See also Staring, 
Voormaals en Thans , and De Bodem ran Nederland,, on the dikes of the 
Netherlands. 
