350 
BENEFITS OF THE ENTERPRISE. 
offered for sale for its benefit. Up to 1858, forty-two thou¬ 
sand acres bad been sold at not far from sixteen pounds ster¬ 
ling or seventy-seven dollars an acre, amounting altogether to 
£661,000 sterling or $3,200,000. The unsold lands were val¬ 
ued at more than £6,000 or nearly $30,000, and as the total 
cost was £164,500 or about $3,100,000, the direct loss to the 
state, exclusive of interest on the capital expended, may be 
stated at £100,000 or something less than $500,000. 
In a country like the United States, of almost boundless 
extent of sparsely inhabited territory, such an expenditure for 
such an object would be poor economy. But Holland has a 
narrow domain, great pecuniary resources, an excessively 
crowded population, and a consequent need of enlarged room 
and opportunity for the exercise of industry. Under such cir¬ 
cumstances, and especially with an exposure to dangers so 
formidable, there is no question of the wisdom of the measure. 
It has already provided homes and occupation for more than 
are found in Overijssel, in North Holland and near Utrecht. In short, they 
occur in all deep bogs, and wherever deep water is left long undisturbed.” 
In one case, a floating island, which had attached itself to the shore, 
continued to float about for a long time after it was torn off by a flood, 
and was solid enough to keep a pond of fresh water upon it sweet, though 
the water in which it was swimming had become brackish from the irrup¬ 
tion of the sea. After the hay is cut, cattle are pastured upon these 
islands, and they sometimes have large trees growing upon them. 
When the turf or peat has been cut, leaving water less than a yard 
deep, Equisetum limosum grows at once, and is followed by the second 
class of marsh plants mentioned above. Their roots do not become de¬ 
tached from the bottom in such shallow water, but form ordinary turf or 
peat. These processes are so rapid that a thickness of from three to six 
feet of turf is formed in half a century, and many men have lived to mow 
grass where they had fished in their boyhood, and to cut turf twice in the 
same spot. 
Captain Gilliss says that before Lake Taguataga in Chili was drained, 
there were in it islands composed of dead plants matted together to a 
thickness of from four to six feet, and with trees of medium size growing 
upon them. These islands floated before tho wind “ with their trees and 
browsing cattle .”—United States Naval Astronomical Expedition to the 
Southern Hemisphere , i, pp. 16, 17. 
