494 
ENCROACHMENTS OF THE SEA. 
upon many parts of the Netherlandish coast. But though the 
general fact of an advance of the ocean upon the land is es¬ 
tablished beyond dispute, the precision of the measurements 
which have been given is open to question. Staring, however, 
who thinks the erosion of the coast much exaggerated by popu¬ 
lar geographers, admits a loss of more than a million and a 
half acres, chiefly worthless morass;* and it is certain that 
but for the resistance of man, but for his erection of dikes and 
protection of dunes, there would now be left of Holland little 
but the name. It is, as has been already seen, still a debated 
question among geologists whether the coast of Holland now 
is, and for centuries has been, subsiding. I believe most in¬ 
vestigators maintain the affirmative ; and if the fact is so, the 
advance of the sea upon the land is, in part, due to this cause. 
But the rate of subsidence is at all events very small, and 
therefore the encroachments of the ocean upon the coast are 
mainly to be ascribed to the erosion and transportation of the 
soil by marine waves and currents. 
The sea is fast advancing at several points of the western 
coast of France, and unknown causes have given a new impulse 
to its ravages since the commencement of the present century. 
Between 1830 and 1842, the Point de Grave, on the north side 
of the Gironde, retreated one hundred and eighty metres, or 
about fifty feet per year; from the latter year to 1846, the rate 
was increased to more than three times that quantity, and the 
loss in those four years was above six hundred feet;. All the 
buildings at the extremity of the peninsula have been taken 
down and rebuilt farther landward, and the lighthouse of the 
Grave now occupies its third position. The sea attacked the 
base of the peninsula also, and the Point de Grave and the ad¬ 
jacent coasts have been for twenty years the scene of one of 
the most obstinately contested struggles between man and the 
ocean recorded in the annals of modern engineering. 
It cannot, indeed, be affirmed that human power is able to 
arrest altogether the incursions of the waves on sandy coasts, 
* Voormaah en Thans , pp. 126,170. 
