Man and Nature Part 14

a. _Exclusion of the Sea by Diking._

The draining of the Lincolns.h.i.+re fens in England, which converted about 400,000 acres of marsh, pool, and tide-washed flat into plough land and pasturage, is a work, or rather series of works, of great magnitude, and it possesses much economical, and, indeed, no trifling geographical importance. Its plans and methods were, at least in part, borrowed from the example of like improvements in Holland, and it is, in difficulty and extent, inferior to works executed for the same purpose on the opposite coast of the North Sea, by Dutch, Frisic, and Low German engineers. The s.p.a.ce I can devote to such operations will be better employed in describing the latter, and I content myself with the simple statement I have already made of the quant.i.ty of worthless and even pestilential land which has been rendered both productive and salubrious in Lincolns.h.i.+re, by diking out the sea, and the rivers which traverse the fens of that country.

The almost continued prevalence of west winds upon 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 sh.o.r.es 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 considerable 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 enormous exaggeration in these numbers; for, with all the reckless hardihood shown by men in braving the dangers and privations 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 sh.o.r.es of the German Ocean very frequently 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, I do not know that the defence or acquisition of land from the sea by diking was ever practised on a large scale until systematically undertaken by the Netherlanders, a few centuries after the commencement of the Christian era. The silence of the Roman historians affords a strong presumption that this art was unknown to the inhabitants of the Netherlands at the time of the Roman invasion, and the elder Pliny's description of the mode of life along the coast which has now been long diked in, applies precisely to the habits of the people who live on the low islands and mainland flats lying outside of the chain of dikes, and wholly unprotected by embankments of any sort.

It has been conjectured, and not without probability, that the causeways built by the Romans across the marshes of the Low Countries, in their campaigns against the Germanic tribes, gave the natives the first hint of the utility which might be derived from similar constructions applied to a different purpose.[306] If this is so, it is one of the most interesting among the many instances in which the arts and enginery of war have been so modified as to be eminently promotive of the blessings of peace, thereby in some measure compensating the wrongs and sufferings they have inflicted on humanity.[307] The Lowlanders are believed to have secured some coast and bay islands by ring dikes, and to have embanked some fresh water channels, as early as the eighth or ninth century; but it does not appear that sea dikes, important enough to be noticed in historical records, were constructed on the mainland before the thirteenth century. The practice of draining inland acc.u.mulation of water, whether fresh or salt, for the purpose of bringing under cultivation the ground they cover, is of later origin, and is said not to have been adopted until after the middle of the fifteenth century.[308]

The total amount of surface gained to the agriculture of the Netherlands by diking out the sea and by draining shallow bays and lakes, is estimated by Staring at three hundred and fifty-five thousand _bunder_ or hectares, equal to eight hundred and seventy-seven thousand two hundred and forty acres, which is one tenth of the area of the kingdom.[309] In very many instances, the dikes have been partially, in some particularly exposed localities totally destroyed by the violence of the sea, and the drained lands again flooded. In some cases, the soil thus painfully won from the ocean has been entirely lost; in others it has been recovered by repairing or rebuilding the dikes and pumping out the water. Besides this, the weight of the dikes gradually sinks them into the soft soil beneath, and this loss of elevation must be compensated by raising the surface, while the increased burden thus added tends to sink them still lower. "Tetens declares," says Kohl, "that in some places the dikes have gradually sunk to the depth of sixty or even a hundred feet."[310] For these reasons, the processes of dike building have been almost everywhere again and again repeated, and thus the total expenditure of money and of labor upon the works in question is much greater than would appear from an estimate of the actual cost of diking-in a given extent of coast land and draining a given area of water surface.[311]

On the other hand, by erosion of the coast line, the drifting of sand dunes into the interior, and the drowning of fens and mora.s.ses by incursions of the sea--all caused, or at least greatly aggravated, by human improvidence--the Netherlands have lost a far larger area of land since the commencement of the Christian era than they have gained by diking and draining. Staring despairs of the possibility of calculating the loss from the first-mentioned two causes of destruction, but he estimates that not less than six hundred and forty thousand bunder, or one million five hundred and eighty-one thousand acres, of fen and marsh have been washed away, or rather deprived of their vegetable surface and covered by water, and thirty-seven thousand bunder, or ninety-one thousand four hundred acres of recovered land, have been lost by the destruction of the dikes which protected them.[312] The average value of land gained from the sea is estimated at about nineteen pounds sterling, or ninety dollars, per acre; while the lost fen and mora.s.s was not worth more than one twenty-fifth part of the same price. The ground buried by the drifting of the dunes appears to have been almost entirely of this latter character, and, upon the whole, there is no doubt that the soil added by human industry to the territory of the Netherlands, within the historical period, greatly exceeds in pecuniary value that which has fallen a prey to the waves during the same era.

Upon most low and shelving coasts, like those of the Netherlands, the maritime currents are constantly changing, in consequence of the variability of the winds, and the s.h.i.+fting of the sandbanks, which the currents themselves now form and now displace. While, therefore, at one point the sea is advancing landward, and requiring great effort to prevent the undermining and was.h.i.+ng away of the dikes, it is shoaling at another by its own deposits, and exposing, at low water, a gradually widening belt of sands and ooze. The coast lands selected for diking-in are always at points where the sea is depositing productive soil. The Eider, the Elbe, the Weser, the Ems, the Rhine, the Maas, and the Schelde bring down large quant.i.ties of fine earth. The prevalence of west winds prevents the waters from carrying this material far out from the coast, and it is at last deposited northward or southward from the mouth of the rivers which contribute it, according to the varying drift of the currents.

The process of natural deposit which prepares the coast for diking-in is thus described by Staring: "All sea-deposited soil is composed of the same const.i.tuents. First comes a stratum of sand, with marine sh.e.l.ls, or the sh.e.l.ls of mollusks living in brackish water. If there be tides, and, of course, flowing and ebbing currents, mud is let fall upon the sand only after the latter has been raised above low-water mark; for then only, at the change from flood to ebb, is the water still enough to form a deposit of so light a material. Where mud is found at greater depths, as, for example, in a large proportion of the Ij, it is a proof that at this point there was never any considerable tidal flow or other current. * * * The powerful tidal currents, flowing and ebbing twice a day, drift sand with them. They scoop out the bottom at one point, raise it at another, and the sandbanks in the current are continually s.h.i.+fting. As soon as a bank raises itself above low-water mark, flags and reeds establish themselves upon it. The mechanical resistance of these plants checks the retreat of the high water and favors the deposit of the earth suspended in it, and the formation of land goes on with surprising rapidity. When it has risen to high-water level, it is soon covered with gra.s.ses, and becomes what is called _schor_ in Zeeland, _kwelder_ in Friesland. Such grounds are the foundation or starting point of the process of diking. When they are once elevated to the flood-tide level, no more mud is deposited upon them except by extraordinary high tides. Their further rise is, accordingly, very slow, and it is seldom advantageous to delay longer the operation of diking."[313]

The formation of new banks by the sea is constantly going on at points favorable for the deposit of sand and earth, and hence opportunity is continually afforded for enclosure of new land outside of that already diked in, the coast is fast advancing seaward, and every new embankment increases the security of former enclosures. The province of Zeeland consists of islands washed by the sea on their western coasts, and separated by the many channels through which the Schelde and some other rivers find their way to the ocean. In the twelfth 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.[314]

In the Netherlands--which the first Napoleon characterized 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 sh.o.r.es 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 presenting such information as can be gathered from works of a more popular character.[315]

The superior strata of the lowlands upon and near the coast are, as we have seen, princ.i.p.ally composed of soil brought down by the great rivers I have mentioned, and either directly deposited by them upon the sands of the bottom, or carried out to sea by their currents, and then, after a shorter or longer exposure to the chemical and mechanical action of salt water and marine currents, restored again to the land by tidal overflow and subsidence from the waters in which it was suspended. At a very remote period, the coast flats were, at many points, raised so high by successive alluvious or tidal deposits as to be above ordinary high water level, but they were still liable to occasional inundation from river floods, and from the sea water also, when heavy or long-continued west winds drove it landward. The extraordinary fertility of this soil and its security as a retreat from hostile violence attracted to it a considerable population, while its want of protection against inundation exposed it to the devastations of which the chroniclers of the Middle Ages have left such highly colored pictures. The first permanent dwellings on the coast flats were erected upon artificial mounds, and many similar precarious habitations still exist on the unwalled islands and sh.o.r.es beyond the chain of dikes. River embankments, which, as is familiarly known, have from the earliest antiquity been employed in many countries where sea dikes are unknown, were probably the first works of this character constructed in the Low Countries, and when two neighboring streams of fresh water had been embanked, the next step in the process would naturally be to connect the river walls together by a transverse dike or raised causeway, which would serve to secure the intermediate ground both against the backwater of river floods and against overflow by the sea. The oldest true sea dikes described in historical records, however, are those enclosing islands in the estuaries of the great rivers, and it is not impossible that the double character they possess as a security against maritime floods and as a military rampart, led to their adoption upon those islands before similar constructions had been attempted upon the mainland.

At some points of the coast, various contrivances, such as piers, piles, and, in fact, obstructions of all sorts to the ebb of the current, are employed to facilitate the deposit of slime, before a regular enclosure is commenced. Usually, however, the first step is to build low and cheap embankments, extending from an older dike, or from high ground, around the parcel of flat intended to be secured. These are called summer dikes (_sommer-deich_, pl. _sommer-deiche_, German; _zomerkaai_, _zomerkade_, pl. _zomerkaaie_, _zomerkaden_, Dutch). They are erected when a sufficient extent of ground to repay the cost has been elevated enough to be covered with coa.r.s.e vegetation fit for pasturage. They serve both to secure the ground from overflow by the ordinary flood tides of mild weather, and to retain the slime deposited by very high water, which would otherwise be partly carried off by the retreating ebb. The elevation of the soil goes on slowly after this; but when it has at last been sufficiently enriched, and raised high enough to justify the necessary outlay, permanent dikes are constructed by which the water is excluded at all seasons. These embankments are constructed of sand from the coast dunes or from sandbanks, and of earth from the mainland or from flats outside the dikes, bound and strengthened by fascines, and provided with sluices, which are generally founded on piles and of very expensive construction, for drainage at low water. The outward slope of the sea dikes is gentle, experience having shown that this form is least exposed to injury both from the waves and from floating ice, and the most modern dikes are even more moderate in the inclination of the seaward scarp than the older ones.[316] The crown of the dike, however, for the last three or four feet of its height, is much steeper, being intended rather as a protection against the spray than against the waves, and the inner slope is always comparatively abrupt.

The height and thickness of dikes varies according to the elevation of the ground they enclose, the rise of the tides, the direction of the prevailing winds, and other special causes of exposure, but it may be said that they are, in general, raised from fifteen to twenty feet above ordinary high-water mark. The water slopes of river dikes are protected by plantations of willows or strong semi-aquatic shrubs or gra.s.ses, but as these will not grow upon banks exposed to salt water, sea dikes must be faced with stone, fascines, or some other _revetement_.[317] Upon the coast of Schleswig and Holstein, where the people have less capital at their command, they defend their embankments against ice and the waves by a coating of twisted straw or reeds, which must be renewed as often as once, sometimes twice a year. The inhabitants of these coasts call the chain of dikes "the golden border," a name it well deserves, whether we suppose it to refer to its enormous cost, or, as is more probable, to its immense value as a protection to their fields and their firesides.

When outlying flats are enclosed by building new embankments, the old interior dikes are suffered to remain, both as an additional security against the waves, and because the removal of them would be expensive.

They serve, also, as roads or causeways, a purpose for which the embankments nearest the sea are seldom employed, because the whole structure might be endangered from the breaking of the turf by wheels and the hoofs of horses. Where successive rows of dikes have been thus constructed, it is observed that the ground defended by the more ancient embankments is lower than that embraced within the newer enclosures, and this depression of level has been ascribed to a general subsidence of the coast from geological causes; but the better opinion seems to be that it is, in most cases, due merely to the consolidation and settling of the earth from being more effectually dried, from the weight of the dikes, from the tread of men and cattle, and from the movement of the heavy wagons which carry off the crops.[318] Notwithstanding this slow sinking, most of the land enclosed by dikes is still above low-water mark, and can, therefore, be wholly or partially freed from rain water, and from that received by infiltration from higher ground, by sluices opened at the ebb of the tide. For this purpose, the land is carefully ditched, and advantage is taken of every favorable occasion for discharging the water through the sluices. But the ground cannot be effectually drained by this means, unless it is elevated four or five feet, at least, above the level of the ebb tide, because the ditches would not otherwise have a sufficient descent to carry the water off in the short interval between ebb and flow, and because the moisture of the saturated subsoil is always rising by capillary attraction. Whenever, therefore, the soil has sunk below the level I have mentioned, and in cases where its surface has never been raised above it, pumps, worked by wind or some other mechanical power, must be very frequently employed to keep the land dry enough for pasturage and cultivation.[319]

b. _Draining of Lakes and Marshes._

The subst.i.tution of steam engines for the feeble and uncertain action of windmills, in driving pumps, has much facilitated the removal of water from the polders and the draining of lakes, marshes, and shallow bays, and thus given such an impulse to these enterprises, that not less than one hundred and ten thousand acres were reclaimed from the waters, and added to the agricultural domain of the Netherlands, between 1815 and 1858. The most important of these undertakings was the draining of the Lake of Haarlem, and for this purpose some of the most powerful hydraulic engines ever constructed were designed and executed.[320] The origin of this lake is unknown. It is supposed by some geographers to be a part of an ancient bed of the Rhine, the channel of which, as there is good reason to believe, has undergone great changes since the Roman invasion of the Netherlands; by others it is thought to have once formed an inland marine channel, separated from the sea by a chain of low islands, which the sand washed up by the tides has since connected with the mainland and converted into a continuous line of coast. The best authorities, however, find geological evidence that the surface occupied by the lake was originally a marshy tract containing within its limits little solid ground, but many ponds and inlets, and much floating as well as fixed fen.

In consequence of the cutting of turf for fuel, and the destruction of the few trees and shrubs which held the loose soil together with their roots, the ponds are supposed to have gradually extended themselves, until the action of the wind upon their enlarged surface gave their waves sufficient force to overcome the resistance of the feeble barriers which separated them, and to unite them all into a single lake. Popular tradition, it is true, ascribes the formation of the Lake of Haarlem to a single irruption of the sea, at a remote period, and connects it with one or another of the destructive inundations of which the Netherland chronicles describe so many; but on a map of the year 1531, a chain of four smaller waters occupies nearly the ground afterward covered by the Lake of Haarlem, and they have more probably been united by gradual encroachments resulting from the improvident practices above referred to, though no doubt the consummation may have been hastened by floods, and by the neglect to maintain dikes, or the intentional destruction of them, in the long wars of the sixteenth century.

The Lake of Haarlem was a body of water not far from fifteen miles in length, by seven in greatest width, lying between the cities of Amsterdam and Leyden, running parallel with the coast of Holland at the distance of about five miles from the sea, and covering an area of about 45,000 acres. By means of the Ij, it communicated with the Zuiderzee, the Mediterranean of the Netherlands, and its surface was little above the mean elevation of that of the sea. Whenever, therefore, the waters of the Zuiderzee were acted upon by strong northwest winds, those of the Lake of Haarlem were raised proportionally and driven southward, while winds from the south tended to create a flow in the opposite direction.

The sh.o.r.es of the lake were everywhere low, and though in the course of the eighty years between 1767 and 1848 more than 350,000 or $1,700,000 had been expended in checking its encroachments, it often burst its barriers, and produced destructive inundations. On the 29th of November, 1836, a south wind brought its waters to the very gates of Amsterdam, and on the 26th of December of the same year, in a northwest gale, they overflowed twenty thousand acres of land at the southern extremity of the lake, and flooded a part of the city of Leyden. The depth of water did not, in general, exceed fourteen feet, but the bottom was a semi-fluid ooze or slime, which partook of the agitation of the waves, and added considerably to their mechanical force. Serious fears were entertained that the lake would form a junction with the inland waters of the Legmeer and Mijdrecht, swallow up a vast extent of valuable soil, and finally endanger the security of a large proportion of the land which the industry of Holland had gained in the course of centuries from the ocean.

For this reason, and for the sake of the large addition the bottom of the lake would make to the cultivable soil of the state, it was resolved to drain it, and the preliminary steps for that purpose were commenced in the year 1840. The first operation was to surround the entire lake with a ring ca.n.a.l and dike, in order to cut off the communication with the Ij, and to exclude the water of the streams and mora.s.ses which discharged themselves into it from the land side. The dike was composed of different materials, according to the means of supply at different points, such as sand from the coast dunes, earth and turf excavated from the line of the ring ca.n.a.l, and floating turf,[321] fascines being everywhere used to bind and compact the ma.s.s together. This operation was completed in 1848, and three steam pumps were then employed for five years in discharging the water. The whole enterprise was conducted at the expense of the state, and in 1853 the recovered lands were offered for sale for its benefit. Up to 1858, forty-two thousand acres had been sold at not far from sixteen pounds sterling or seventy-seven dollars an acre, amounting altogether to 661,000 sterling or $3,200,000. The unsold lands were valued at more than 6,000 or nearly $30,000, and as the total cost was 764,500 or about $3,700,000, 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 spa.r.s.ely 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 circ.u.mstances, 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 five thousand citizens, and furnished a profitable investment for a capital of not less than 400,000 sterling or $2,000,000, which has been expended in improvements over and above the purchase money of the soil; and the greater part of this sum, as well as of the cost of drainage, has been paid as a compensation for labor. The excess of governmental expenditure over the receipts, if employed in constructing s.h.i.+ps of war or fortifications, would have added little to the military strength of the kingdom; but the increase of territory, the multiplication of homes and firesides which the people have an interest in defending, and the augmentation of agricultural resources, const.i.tute a stronger bulwark against foreign invasion than a s.h.i.+p of the line or a fortress armed with a hundred cannon.

The bearing of the works I have noticed, and of others similar in character, upon the social and moral, as well as the purely economical interests of the people of the Netherlands, has induced me to describe them more in detail than the general purpose of this volume may be thought to justify; but if we consider them simply from a geographical point of view, we shall find that they are possessed of no small importance as modifications of the natural condition of terrestrial surface. There is good reason to believe that before the establishment of a partially civilized race upon the territory now occupied by Dutch, Frisic, and Low German communities, the grounds not exposed to inundation were overgrown with dense woods, that the lowlands between these forests and the sea coasts were marshes, covered and partially solidified by a thick matting of peat plants and shrubs interspersed with trees, and that even the sand dunes of the sh.o.r.e were protected by a vegetable growth which, in a great measure, prevented the drifting and translocation of them.

The present causes of river and coast erosion existed, indeed, at the period in question; but some of them must have acted with less intensity, there were strong natural safeguards against the influence of marine and fresh-water currents, and the conflicting tendencies had arrived at a condition of approximate equilibrium, which permitted but slow and gradual changes in the face of nature. The destruction of the forests around the sources and along the valleys of the rivers by man gave them a more torrential character. The felling of the trees, and the extirpation of the shrubbery upon the fens by domestic cattle, deprived the surface of cohesion and consistence, and the cutting of peat for fuel opened cavities in it, which, filling at once with water, rapidly extended themselves by abrasion of their borders, and finally enlarged to pools, lakes, and gulfs, like the Lake of Haarlem and the northern part of the Zuiderzee. The cutting of the wood and the depasturing of the gra.s.ses upon the sand dunes converted them from solid bulwarks against the ocean to loose acc.u.mulations of dust, which every sea breeze drove farther landward, burying, perhaps, fertile soil and choking up watercourses on one side, and exposing the coast to erosion by the sea upon the other.

c. _Geographical Influence of such Operations._

The changes which human action has produced within twenty centuries in the Netherlands and the neighboring provinces, are certainly of no small geographical importance, considered simply as a direct question of loss and gain of territory. They have also undoubtedly been attended with some climatic consequences, they have exercised a great influence on the spontaneous animal and vegetable life of this region, and they cannot have failed to produce effects upon tidal and other oceanic currents, the range of which may be very extensive. The force of the tidal wave, the height to which it rises, the direction of its currents, and, in fact, all the phenomena which characterize it, as well as all the effects it produces, depend as much upon the configuration of the coast it washes, and the depth of water, and form of bottom near the sh.o.r.e, as upon the attraction which occasions it. Every one of the terrestrial conditions which affect the character of tidal and other marine currents has been very sensibly modified by the operations I have described, and on this coast, at least, man has acted almost as powerfully on the physical geography of the sea as on that of the land.

_Lowering of Lakes._

The hydraulic works of the Netherlands and of the neighboring states are of such magnitude, that they quite throw into the shade all other known artificial arrangements for defending the land against the encroachments of the rivers and the sea, and for reclaiming to the domain of agriculture and civilization soil long covered by the waters. But although the recovery and protection of lands flooded by the sea seems to be an art wholly of Netherlandish origin, we have abundant evidence, that in ancient as well as in comparatively modern times, great enterprises more or less a.n.a.logous in character have been successfully undertaken, both in inland Europe and in the less familiar countries of the East.

One of the best known of these is the tunnel which serves to discharge the surplus waters of the Lake of Albano, about fourteen miles from Rome. This lake, about six miles in circuit, occupies one of the craters of an extinct volcanic range, and the surface of its waters is about nine hundred feet above the sea. It is fed by rivulets and subterranean springs originating in the Alban Mount, or Monte Cavo, the most elevated peak of the volcanic group just mentioned, which rises to the height of about three thousand feet. At present the lake has no discoverable natural outlet, but it is not known that the water ever stood at such a height as to flow regularly over the lip of the crater. It seems that at the earliest period of which we have any authentic memorials, its level was usually kept by evaporation, or by discharge through subterranean channels, considerably below the rim of the basin which encompa.s.sed it, but in the year 397 B. C., the water, either from the obstruction of such channels, or in consequence of increased supplies from unknown sources, rose to such a height as to flow over the edge of the crater, and threaten inundation to the country below by bursting through its walls. To obviate this danger, a tunnel for carrying off the water was pierced at a level much below the height to which it had risen. This gallery, cut entirely with the chisel through the rock for a distance of six thousand feet, or nearly a mile and one seventh, is still in so good condition as to serve its original purpose. The fact that this work was contemporaneous with the siege of Veii, has given to ancient annalists occasion to connect the two events, but modern critics are inclined to reject Livy's account of the matter, as one of the many improbable fables which disfigure the pages of that historian. It is, however, repeated by Cicero and by Dionysins of Halicarna.s.sus, and it is by no means impossible that, in an age when priests and soothsayers monopolized both the arts of natural magic and the little which yet existed of physical science, the Government of Rome, by their aid, availed itself at once of the superst.i.tion and of the military ardor of its citizens to obtain their sanction to an enterprise which sounder arguments might not have induced them to approve.

Still more remarkable is the tunnel cut by the Emperor Claudius to drain the Lake Fucinus, now Lago di Celano, in the Neapolitan territory, about fifty miles eastward of Rome. This lake, as far as its history is known, has varied very considerably in its dimensions at different periods, according to the character of the seasons. It has no visible outlet, but was originally either drained by natural subterranean conduits, or kept within certain extreme limits by evaporation. In years of uncommon moisture, it spread over the adjacent soil and destroyed the crops; in dry seasons, it retreated, and produced epidemic disease by poisonous exhalations from the decay of vegetable and animal matter upon its exposed bed. Julius Caesar had proposed the construction of a tunnel to drain the lake, but the enterprise was not actually undertaken until the reign of Claudius, when--after a temporary failure, from errors in levelling by the engineers, as was pretended at the time, or, as now appears certain, in consequence of frauds by the contractors in the execution of the work--it was at least partially completed. From this imperfect construction, it soon got out of repair, but was restored by Hadrian, and seems to have answered its design for some centuries. In the barbarism which followed the downfall of the empire, it again fell into decay, and though numerous attempts were made to repair it during the Middle Ages, no tolerable success seems to have attended any of these efforts, until the present generation.

Works have now been some years in progress for restoring, or rather enlarging and rebuilding this ancient tunnel, upon a scale of grandeur which does infinite honor to the liberality and public spirit of the projectors, and with an ingenuity of design and a constructive skill which reflect the highest credit upon the professional ability of the engineers who have planned the works and directed their execution. The length of this tunnel is 18,634 feet, or rather more than three miles and a half. Of course, it is one of the longest subterranean galleries yet executed in Europe, and it offers many curious particulars in its original design which cannot here be described. The difference between the highest and the lowest known levels of the surface of the lake amounts to at least forty feet, and the difference of area covered at these respective stages is not much less than eight thousand acres. The tunnel will reduce the water to a much lower point, and it is computed that, including the lands occasionally overflowed, not less than forty thousand acres of as fertile soil as any in Italy will be recovered from the lake and permanently secured from inundation by its waters.

Many similar enterprises have been conceived and executed in modern times, both for the purpose of reclaiming land covered by water and for sanitary reasons.[322] They are sometimes attended with wholly unexpected evils, as, for example, in the case of Barton Pond, in Vermont, and in that of the Lake Storsjo, in Sweden, already mentioned on a former page. Another still less obvious consequence of the withdrawal of the waters has occasionally been observed in these operations. The hydrostatic force with which the water, in virtue of its specific gravity, presses against the banks that confine it, has a tendency to sustain them whenever their composition and texture are not such as to expose them to softening and dissolution by the infiltration of the water. If then, the slope of the banks is considerable, or if the earth of which they are composed rests on a smooth and slippery stratum inclining toward the bed of the lake, they are liable to fall or slide forward when the mechanical support of the water is removed, and this sometimes happens on a considerable scale. A few years ago, the surface of the Lake of Lungern, in the Canton of Unterwalden, in Switzerland, was lowered by driving a tunnel about a quarter of a mile long through the narrow ridge, called the Kaiserstuhl, which forms a barrier at the north end of the basin. When the water was drawn off, the banks, which are steep, cracked and burst, several acres of ground slid down as low as the water receded, and even the whole village of Lungern was thought to be in no small danger.

Other inconveniences of a very serious character have often resulted from the natural wearing down, or, much more frequently, the imprudent destruction, of the barriers which confine mountain lakes. In their natural condition, such basins serve both to receive and retain the rocks and other detritus brought down by the torrents which empty into them, and to check the impetus of the rus.h.i.+ng waters by bringing them to a temporary pause; but if the outlets are lowered so as to drain the reservoirs, the torrents continue their rapid flow through the ancient bed of the basins, and carry down with them the sand and gravel with which they are charged, instead of depositing their burden as before in the still waters of the lakes.

_Mountain Lakes._

It is a common opinion in America that the river meadows, bottoms, or _intervales_, as they are popularly called, are generally the beds of ancient lakes which have burst their barriers and left running currents in their place. It was shown by Dr. Dwight, many years ago, that this is very far from being universally true; but there is no doubt that mountain lakes were of much more frequent occurrence in primitive than in modern geography, and there are many chains of such still existing in regions where man has yet little disturbed the original features of the earth. In the long valleys of the Adirondack range in Northern New York, and in the mountainous parts of Maine, eight, ten, and even more lakes and lakelets are sometimes found in succession, each emptying into the next lower pool, and so all at last into some considerable river. When the mountain slopes which supply these basins shall be stripped of their woods, the augmented swelling of the lakes will break down their barriers, their waters will run off, and the valleys will present successions of flats with rivers running through them, instead of chains of lakes connected by natural ca.n.a.ls.

A similar state of things seems to have existed in the ancient geography of France. "Nature," says Lavergne, "has not excavated on the flanks of our Alps reservoirs as magnificent as those of Lombardy; she had, however, constructed smaller, but more numerous lakes, which the negligence of man has permitted to disappear. Auguste de Gasparin, brother of the ill.u.s.trious agriculturist, demonstrated more than thirty years ago, in an original paper, that many natural dikes formerly existed in the mountain valleys, which have been swept away by the waters. He proposed to rebuild and to multiply them. This interesting suggestion has reappeared several times since, but has met with strong opposition from skilful engineers. It would, nevertheless, be well to try the experiment of creating artificial lakes which should fill themselves with the water of melting snows and deluging rains, to be drawn out in times of drought. If this plan has able opposers, it has also warm advocates. Experience alone can decide the question."[323]

_Climatic Effects of Draining Lakes and Marshes._

The draining of lakes, marshes, and other superficial acc.u.mulations of moisture, reduces the water surface of a country, and, of course, the evaporation from it. Lakes, too, in elevated positions, lose a part of their water by infiltration, and thereby supply other lakes, springs, and rivulets at lower levels. Hence, it is evident that the draining of such waters, if carried on upon a large scale, must affect both the humidity and the temperature of the atmosphere, and the permanent supply of water for extensive districts.[324]

_Geographical and Climatic Effects of Aqueducts, Reservoirs, and Ca.n.a.ls._

Many processes of internal improvement, such as aqueducts for the supply of great cities, railroad cuts and embankments, and the like, divert water from its natural channels, and affect its distribution and ultimate discharge. The collecting of the waters of a considerable district into reservoirs, to be thence carried off by means of aqueducts, as, for example, in the forest of Belgrade, near Constantinople, deprives the grounds originally watered by the springs and rivulets of the necessary moisture, and reduces them to barrenness.

Similar effects must have followed from the construction of the numerous aqueducts which supplied ancient Rome with such a profuse abundance of water. On the other hand, the filtration of water through the banks or walls of an aqueduct carried upon a high level across low ground, often injures the adjacent soil, and is prejudicial to the health of the neighboring population; and it has been observed in Switzerland, that fevers have been produced by the stagnation of the water in excavations from which earth had been taken to form embankments for railways.

If we consider only the influence of physical improvements on civilized life, we shall perhaps ascribe to navigable ca.n.a.ls a higher importance, or at least a more diversified influence, than to any other works of man designed to control the waters of the earth, and to affect their distribution, They bind distant regions together by social ties, through the agency of the commerce they promote; they facilitate the transportation of military stores and engines, and of other heavy material connected with the discharge of the functions of government; they encourage industry by giving marketable value to raw material and to objects of artificial elaboration which would otherwise be worthless on account of the cost of conveyance; they supply from their surplus waters means of irrigation and of mechanical power; and, in many other ways, they contribute much to advance the prosperity and civilization of nations. Nor are they wholly without geographical importance. They sometimes drain lands by conveying off water which would otherwise stagnate on the surface, and, on the other hand, like aqueducts, they render the neighboring soil cold and moist by the percolation of water through their embankments;[325] they dam up, check, and divert the course of natural currents, and deliver them at points opposite to, or distant from, their original outlets; they often require extensive reservoirs to feed them, thus retaining through the year acc.u.mulations of water--which would otherwise run off, or evaporate in the dry season--and thereby enlarging the evaporable surface of the country; and we have already seen that they interchange the flora and the fauna of provinces widely separated by nature. All these modes of action certainly influence climate and the character of terrestrial surface, though our means of observation are not yet perfected enough to enable us to appreciate and measure their effects.

_Climatic and Geographical Effects of Surface and Underground Draining._

I have commenced this chapter with a description of the dikes and other hydraulic works of the Netherland engineers, because the geographical results of such operations are more obvious and more easily measured, though certainly not more important, than those of the older and more widely diffused modes of resisting or directing the flow of waters, which have been practised from remote antiquity in the interior of all civilized countries. Draining and irrigation are habitually regarded as purely agricultural processes, having little or no relation to technical geography; but we shall find that they exert a powerful influence on soil, climate, and animal and vegetable life, and may, therefore, justly claim to be regarded as geographical elements.

_Surface and Under-draining and their Effects._