The Earth As Modified By Human Action Part 25

Loss of Land by Incursions of Sea.

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. [Footnote: Staring, Voormaals en Thans, p. 163.] 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 sand-banks, 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.

Marine Deposits.

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 great 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 sand-banks 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." [Footnote: Voormaals en Thans, pp. 150, 151. According to Reventlov, confercae first appear at the bottom in shoal water, then, after the deposit has risen above the surface, Salicornia herbacea. The Salicornia is followed by various sand-plants, and so the ground rises, by Poa distans and Poa maritum, and finally common gra.s.ses establish themselves.--Om Markdannelsen poa Vestkyeten of Slesvig, pp. 7, 8.]

Sea-dikes of the Netherlands.

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. [Footnote: 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 century, 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.--Inseln u. Marschen Schlene, Holst., iii., p. 202]

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 Frisie, 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.

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 seawater also, when heavy or long-continued west winds drove it landwards. 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 as a means of communication between different hamlets and at the same time 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. 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 sand-banks, 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. [Footnote: The inclination varies from one foot rise in four of base to one foot in fourteen.--Kohl, iii., p. 210.] 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. [Footnote: The dikes are sometimes founded upon piles, and sometimes protected by one or more rows of piles driven deeply down into the bed of the sea in front of them. "Triple rows of piles of Scandinavian pine," says Wild, "have been driven down along the coast of Friesland, where there are no dunes, for a distance of one hundred and fifty miles. The piles are bound together by strong cross-timbers and iron clamps, and the interstices filled with stones. The ground adjacent to the piling is secured with fascines, and at exposed points heavy blocks of stone are heaped up as an additional protection. The earth-dike is built behind the mighty bulwark of this breakwater, and its foot also is fortified with stones." ... "The great Helder dike is about five miles long and forty feet wide at the top, along which runs a good road. It slopes down two hundred feet into the sea, at an angle of forty degrees. The highest waves do not reach the summit, the lowest always cover its base. At certain distances, immense b.u.t.tresses, of a height and width proportioned to those of the dike, and even more strongly built, run several hundred feet out into the rolling sea. This gigantic artificial coast is entirely composed of Norwegian granite."--Wild, Die Niederlande, i., pp. 61, 62.] 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; [Footnote: A similar subsidence of the surface is observed in the diked ground of the Lincolns.h.i.+re fens, where there is no reason to suspect a general depression 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. [Footnote: The shaking of the ground, even when loaded with large buildings, by the pa.s.sage of heavy carriages or artillery, or by the march of a body of cavalry or even infantry, shows that such causes may produce important mechanical effects on the condition of the soil. The bogs in the Netherlands, as in most other countries, contain large numbers of fallen trees, buried to a certain depth by earth and vegetable mould. When the bogs are dry enough to serve as pastures, it is observed that trunks of these ancient trees rise of themselves to the surface. Staring ascribes this singular phenomenon to the agitation of the ground by the tread of cattle. "When roadbeds," observes he, "are constructed of gravel and pebbles of different sizes, and these latter are placed at the bottom without being broken and rolled hard together, they are soon brought to the top by the effect of travel on the road.

Lying loosely, they undergo some motion from the pa.s.sage of every wagon-wheel and the tread of every horse that pa.s.ses over them. This motion is an oscillation or partial rolling, and as one side of a pebble is raised, a little fine sand or earth is forced under it, and the frequent repet.i.tion of this process by cattle or carriages moving in opposite directions brings it at last to the surface. We may suppose that a similar effect is produced on the stems of trees in the bogs by the tread of animals."--De Bodem van Nederland, i., pp. 75, 76.

It is observed in the Northern United States, that when soils containing pebbles are cleared and cultivated, and the stones removed from the surface, new pebbles, and even bowlders of many pounds weight, continue to show themselves above the ground, every spring, for a long series of years. In clayey soils the fence-posts are thrown up in a similar way, and it is not uncommon to see the lower rail of a fence thus gradually raised a foot or even two feet above the ground. This rising of stones and fences is popularly ascribed to the action of the severe frosts of that climate. The expansion of the ground, in freezing, it is said, raises its surface, and, with the surface, objects lying near or connected with it. When the soil thaws in the spring, it settles back again to its former level, while the pebbles and posts are prevented from sinking as low as before by loose earth which has fallen under them. The fact that the elevation spoken of is observed only in the spring gives countenance to this theory, which is perhaps applicable also to the cases stated by Staring, and it is probable that the two causes above a.s.signed concur in producing the effect.

The question of the subsidence of the Netherlandish coast has been much discussed. Not to mention earlier geologists, Venema, in several essays, and particularly in Het Dalen van de Noordelijke Kuststreken van ons Land, 1854, adduces many facts and arguments to prove a slow sinking of the northere provinces of Holland. Laveleye (Affaiss.e.m.e.nt du sol at envas.e.m.e.nt des fleuves survenus dans les temps historiques, 1859), upon a still fuller investigation, arrives at the same conclusion. The eminent geologist Staring, however, who briefly refers to the subject in De Bodem van Nederland, i., p. 356 et seqq., does not consider the evidence sufficient to prove anything more than the sinking of the surface of the polders from drying and consolidation.--See Elisee Reclus, La Terre, vol. i., pp. 730, 732.]

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 sub-soil 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. [Footnote: The elevation of the lands enclosed by dikes--or polders, as they are called in Holland--above low-water mark, depends upon the height of the tides or, in other words, upon the difference between ebb and flood. The tide cannot deposit earth higher than it flows, and after the ground is once enclosed, the decay of the vegetables grown upon it and the addition of manures do not compensate the depression occasional by drying and consolidation. On the coast of Zeeland and the islands of South Holland, the tides, and of course the surface of the lands deposited by them, are so high that the polders can be drained by ditching and sluices, but at other points, as in the enclosed grounds of North Holland on the Zuiderzee, where the tide rises but three feet or even less, pumping is necessary from the beginning.--Staring, Voormaals en Thans, p. 152]

DRAINING OF THE LAKE OF HAARLEM.

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 as well as 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 wore reclaimed from the waters, and added to the agricultural domain of the Netherlands, between 1815 and 1855. The most important of these undertaking was the draining of the Lake of Haarlem, and for this purpose some of the most powerful hydraulic engines over constructed were designed and executed.

[Footnote: The princ.i.p.al engine, of 500 horse-power, drove eleven pumps with a total delivery of 31,000 cubic yards per hour.--Wild, Die Netherland, i., p. 87.] 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 afterwards covered by the Lake of Haarlem, and they have most 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 north-west winds, those of the Lake of Haarlem were raised proportionally and driven southwards, 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 between the years 1767 and 1848 more than $1,700,000 had been expended in checking its encroachments, it often burst its barriers, and produced destructive inundations. In November, 1836, a south wind brought its waters to the very gates of Amsterdam, and in December of the same year, in a north-west 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 in the lake 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, [Footnote: In England and New England, where the marshes have been already drained or are of comparatively small extent, the existence of large floating islands seems incredible, and has sometimes been treated as a fable, but no geographical fact is better established. Kohl (Inseln und Marschen Schleswig-Holsteins, iii., p. 309) reminds us that Pliny mentions among the wonders of Germany the floating islands, covered with trees, which met the Roman fleets at the mouths of the Elbe and the Weser. Our author speaks also of having visited, in the territory of Bremen, floating moors, bearing not only houses but whole villages. At low stages of the water these moors rest upon a bed of sand, but are raised from six to ten feet by the high water of spring, and remain afloat until, in the course of the summer, the water beneath is exhausted by evaporation and drainage, when they sink down upon the sand again.

Staring explains, in an interesting way, the whole growth, formation, and functions of floating fens or bogs, in his very valuable work, De Bodem van Nederland, i., pp. 36-43. The substance of his account is as follows: The turf and the surface of the fens, is stillness of the water. Hence they are not found in running streams, nor in pools so large as to be subject to frequent agitation by the wind. For example, not a single plant grew in the open part of the Lake of Haarlem, and fens cease to form in all pools as soon as, by the cutting of the turf for fuel or other purposes, their area is sufficiently enlarged to be much acted on by wind. When still water above a yard deep is left undisturbed, aquatic plants of various genera, such as Nuphar, Nymphaea, Limnanthemum, Stratiotes, Polygonum, and Potamogeton, fill the bottom with roots and cover the surface with leaves. Many of the plants die every year, and prepare at the bottom a soil fit for the growth of a higher order of vegetation, Phragmites, Acorus, Sparganium, Rumex, Lythrum, Pedicularis, Spiraea, Polystichum, Comarum, Caltha, etc., etc.

In the course of twenty or thirty years the muddy bottom is filled with roots of aquatic and marsh plants, which are lighter than water, and if the depth is great enough to give room for detaching this vegetable network, a couple of yard for example, it rises to the surface, bearing with it, of course, the soil formed above it by decay of stems and leaves. New genera now appear upon the ma.s.s, such a Carex, Menyanthes, and others, and soon thicky cover it. The turf has now acquired a thickness of from two to four feet, and is called in Groningen lad; in Friesland, til, tilland, or drifftil; in Overijsse, krag; and in Holland, rietzod. It floats about as driven by the wind, gradually increasing in thickness by the decay of its annual crops of vegetation, and in about half a century reaches the bottom and becomes fixed. If it has not been invaded in the meantime by men or cattle, trees and arborescent plants, Alnus, Salix, Myrica, etc., appear, and these contribute to hasten the attachment of the turf to the bottom, both by their weight and by sending their roots quite through into the ground."

This is the regular method employed by nature for the gradual filling up of shallow lakes and pools, and converting them first into mora.s.s and then into dry land. Whenever, therefore, man removes the peat or turf, he exerts an injurious geographical agency, and, as I have already said, there is no doubt that the immense extension of the inland seas of Holland in modern times is owing to this and other human imprudences.

"Hundreds of hectares of floating pastures," says our author, "which have nothing in their appearance to distinguish them from gra.s.s-lands resting on solid bog, 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 sh.o.r.e, 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 irruption of the sea. After the hay is cut, cattle are pastured, and occasionally root-crops grown 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 cla.s.s of marsh plants mentioned above. Their roots do not become detached 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 gra.s.s where they had fished in their boyhood, and to cut turf twice in the same spot. In Ireland the growth of peat is said to be much more rapid.

Elisee Reclus, La Terre, i., 591, 592. But see Asbjornsen, Torv og Torvdrift, ii., 29, 30.

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 the wind "with their trees and browsing cattle."--United States Naval Astronomical Expedition to the Southern Hemisphere, i., pp. 16, 17.] 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 L661,000 sterling or $3,200,000. The unsold lands were valued at more than L6,000 or nearly $30,000, and as the total cost was L764,500 or about $3,700,000, the direct loss to the state, exclusive of interest on the capital expended, may be stated at L100,000 or something less than $500,000.

The success of this operation has encouraged others of like nature in Holland. The Zuid Plas, which covered 11,500 acres and was two feet deeper than the Lake of Haarlem, has been drained, and a similar work now in course of execution on an arm of the Scheld, will recover about 35,000 acres.

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 private capital of not less than L400,000 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.

Draining of the Zuiderzee.

I have referred to the draining of the Lake of Haarlem as an operation of great geographical as well as economical and mechanical interest. A much more gigantic project, of a similar character, is now engaging the attention of the Netherlandish engineers. It is proposed to drain the great salt-water basin called the Zuiderzee. This inland sea covers an area of not less than two thousand square miles, or about one million three hundred thousand acres. The seaward half, or that portion lying north-west of a line drawn from Enkhuizen to Stavoren, is believed to have been converted from a marsh to an open bay since the fifth century after Christ, and this change is ascribed, partly if not wholly, to the interference of man with the order of nature. The Zuiderzee communicates with the sea by at least six considerable channels, separated from each other by low islands, and the tide rises within the basin to the height of three feet. To drain the Zuiderzee, these channels must first be closed and the pa.s.sage of the tidal flood through them cut off. If this be done, the coast currents will be restored approximately to the lines they followed fourteen or fifteen centuries ago, and thero can be little doubt that an appreciable effect will thus be produced upon all the tidal phenomena of that coast, and, of course, upon the maritime geography of Holland.

A ring-dike and ca.n.a.l must then be constructed around the landward side of the basin, to exclude and carry off the freshwater streams which now empty into it. One of these, the Ijssel, a considerable river, has a course of eighty miles, and is, in fact, one of the outlets of the Rhine, though augmented by the waters of several independent tributaries. These preparations being made, and perhaps transverse dikes erected at convenient points for dividing the gulf into smaller portions, the water must be pumped out by machinery, in substantially the same way as in the case of the Lake of Haarlem. [Footnote: The dependence of man upon the aid of spontaneous nature, in his most arduous material works, is curiously ill.u.s.trated by the fact that one of the most serious difficulties to be encountered in executing this gigantic scheme is that of procuring brushwood for the fascines to be employed in the embankments. See Diggelen's pamphlet, "Groote Werken in Nederland."] No safe calculations can be made as to the expenditure of time and money required for the execution of this stupendous enterprise, but I believe its practicability is not denied by competent judges, though doubts are entertained as to its financial expediency. [Footnote: The plan at present most in favor is that which proposes the drainage of only a portion of the southern half of the Zuiderzee, which covers not far from 400,000 acres. The project for the construction of a s.h.i.+p-ca.n.a.l directly from Amsterdam to the North Sea, now in course of execution, embraces the drainage of the Ij, a nearly land-locked basin communicating with the Zuiderzee and covering more than 12,000 acres.

See official reports on these projects in Droogmaking vom het zuidelyk gedeelte der Zuiderzee, te s' Gravenhage, 1868, 4to.] The geographical results of this improvement would be a.n.a.logous to those of the draining of the Lake of Haarlem, but many times multiplied in extent, and its meteorological effects, though perhaps not perceptible on the coast, could hardly fail to be appreciable in the interior of Holland.

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 its 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 water-courses on one side, and exposing the coast to erosion by the sea upon the other.

Geographical Effect of Physical Improvements in the Netherlands.

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, as we shall see hereafter, 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. [Footnote: See, on the influence of the artificial modification of the coast-line on tides and other marine currents, Staring, De Bodem van Nederland, i., p. 279.]

Ancient Hydraulic Works.

The hydraulic works of the Netherlands and of the neighboring states are of such magnitude that--with the exception of the dikes of the Mississippi--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.

In many cases no historical record remains to inform us when or by whom such works were constructed. The Greeks and Romans, the latter especially, were more inclined to undertake and carry out stupendous material enterprises than to boast of them; and many of the grandest and most important constructions of those nations are absolutely unnoticed by contemporary annalists, and are first mentioned by writers living after all knowledge of the epochs of the projectors of these works had perished. Thus the aqueduct known as the Pont du Gard, near Nimes, which, though not surpa.s.sing in volume or in probable cost other a.n.a.logous constructions of ancient and of modern ages, is yet among the most majestic and imposing remains of ancient civil architecture, is not so much as spoken of by any Roman author, [Footnote: One reason for the silence of Roman writers in respect to great material improvements which had no immediate relation to military or political objects, is doubtless the contempt in which mechanical operations and mechanical contrivances were held by that nation of spoilers. Even the engineer, upon whose skill the attack or defence of a great city depended, was only praefectus fabrum, the master-artisan, and had no military rank or command. This prejudice continued to a late period in the Middle Ages, and the chiefs of artillery were equally without grade or t.i.tle as soldiers.

"The occupations of all artisans," says Cicero, "are base, and the shop can have nothing of the respectable." De Officiis, 1, i., 42. The position of the surgeon relatively to the physician, in England, is a remnant of the same prejudice, which still survives in full vigor in Italy, with regard to both trade and industry. See p. 6, ante.] and we are in absolute ignorance of the age or the construction of the remarkable tunnel cut to drain Lake Copais in Boeotia. This lake, now reduced by sedimentary deposit and the growth of aquatic and semi-aquatic vegetation to the condition of a marsh, was originally partially drained by natural subterranean outlets in the underlying limestone rock, many of which still exist. But these emissaries, or katavothra, as they are called in both ancient and modern Greek, were insufficient for the discharge of the water, and besides, they were constantly liable to be choked by earth and vegetables, and in such cases the lake rose to a height which produced much injury. To remedy this evil and secure a great accession of fertile soil, at some period anterior to the existence of a written literature in Greece and ages before the time of any prose author whose works have come down to us, two tunnels, one of them four miles long, and of course not inferior to the Torlonian emissary in length, were cut through the solid rock, and may still be followed throughout their whole extent. They were repaired in the time of Alexander the Great, in the fourth century before Christ, and their date was at that time traditionally referred to the reign of rulers who lived as early as the period of the Trojan war.

One of the best known hydraulic works of the Romans 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, and 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 Dionysius 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 former 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 lies 2,200 feet above the sea, and 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 lower the bed of the lake and provide a regular discharge for its waters, 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 is said to have answered its design for some centuries. [Footnote: The fact alluded to in a note on p. 97, ante, that since the opening of a communication between Lake Celano and the Garigliano by the works noticed in the text, fish, of species common in the lake, but not previously found in the river, have become naturalized in the Garigliano, is a circ.u.mstance of some weight as evidence that the emissary was not actually open in ancient times; for if the waters had been really connected, the fish of the lake would naturally have followed the descending current and established themselves in the river as they have done now.] 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.

Draining of Lake Celano by Prince Torlonia.