BUNKS OF DENMARK. 
497 
and tlieir eastern boundary, and covered the large area above 
mentioned, in fourteen hundred years. We know, from writ¬ 
ten records, that they have buried extensive fields and forests 
and thriving villages, and changed the courses of rivers, and 
that the lighter particles carried from them by the winds, even 
where not transported in sufficient quantities to form sand 
hills, have rendered sterile much land formerly fertile.* They 
have also injuriously obstructed the natural drainage of the 
maritime districts by choking up the beds of the streams, and 
forming lakes and pestilential swamps of no inconsiderable ex¬ 
tent. In fact, so completely do they embank the coast, that 
between the Gironde and the village of Mimizan, a distance of 
one hundred miles, there are but two outlets for the discharge 
of all the waters which flow from the land to the sea; and the 
eastern front of the dunes is bordered by a succession of stag¬ 
nant pools, some of which are more than six miles in length 
and breadth.f 
% 
The Dunes of Denmark and Prussia. 
In the small kingdom of Denmark, inclusive of the duchies 
of Schleswig and Holstein, the dunes cover an area of more 
than two hundred and sixty square miles. The breadth of the 
* The movement of the dunes has been hardly less destructive on the 
north side of the Gironde. See the valuable article of LlisIse Reoltjs 
already referred to, in the Revue des Deux Mondes , for December, 1862, 
entitled “ Le Littoral de la France.” 
t Laval, Memoire sur les Dunes du Golfe de Gascogne , Annales des 
Fonts et Gliaussees , 1847, p. 223. The author adds, as a curious and unex¬ 
plained fact, that some of these pools, though evidently not original for¬ 
mations but mere accumulations of water dammed up by the dunes, have, 
along their western shore, near the base of the sand hills, a depth of more 
than one hundred and thirty feet, and hence their bottoms are not less 
than eighty feet below the level of the lowest tides. Their western banks 
descend steeply, conforming nearly to the slope of the dunes, while on the 
northeast and south the inclination of their beds is very gradual. The 
greatest depth of these pools corresponds to that of the sea ten miles from 
the shore. Is it possible that the weight of the sands has pressed together 
the soil on which they rest, and thus occasioned a subsidence of the surface 
extending beyond their base ? 
32 
