birds which have been searching for their
daily food. Just such portions of muddy
beach, upon which sand has been drifted by
the wind, are to be seen in our museums
hardened into stone, and yet bearing fresh
traces of waves, and rain-drops, and birds,
that left marks of their action, and evidence
of their existence, ages upon ages—upon
ages! ago.

The most southern point of the Norfolk
Coast is a peninsula composed entirely of sea-
sand, stretching four or five miles from north
to south, between the German Ocean and the
estuary of the three rivers, Bure, Yare, and
Waveney, and being less than a mile in
extreme breadth. In the midst stands the
town of Great Yarmouth; the portions of
sandy plain above and below which are
called the North and South Denes. The
excavations for draining the town, made in
1851, showed how deep and unmixed was the
sandy stratum. The highest portion of the
South Denes is a ridge running parallel with
the shore, and raised not many feet above it,
but still commanding a most pleasing panorama
of sea and land, town and country. It
is annually used as a race-course; and for a
walk or a canter, there are not many more
cheerful and healthy spots on the face of the
earth. Only, if a squall comes on, there is no
shelter to be had, unless one could, rabbit-
like, scoop a cave in the earth. On this slight
elevation stands the well-known pillar, called
Nelson's Monument. But the whole peninsula
is a nearly level plain. It is covered
with herbage, so short and fine, that to turn
sheep and cattle to feed there seems almost
as cruel as driving them to graze upon a
green Brussels carpet, which has undergone
a dozen years of family service. It is
marvellous that they do live and grow. Numbers
of brood geese also find the materials whence
to produce their eggs and young.

The main agent which now causes any
change in the level of the Denes is the wind,
which not only deposits the drifting sand
around every tuft of grass, but also opens a
wider gap at any spot left bare of vegetation.
I believe that were the Corporation of Great
Yarmouth to shut up the Denes for a few
years, instead of allowing them to be fed
close, their level would rise rapidly from the
accumulating deposit amongst the uncropped
herbage. On the North Denes (where stand
the mills immortalised in Robinson Crusoe),
every tuft of furze is the foundation of a
hillock; just as the African sand-winds raise
a small mound over the carcase of every
camel left exposed on the surface of the
desert. One of these pyramids has come to
be privately designated by a knot of young
adventurers, "The Peak of Teneriffe;" another
level and isolated elevation, "The Table Mountain."
They are admirable hills, in small,
for infantile geographers to explore with a
reckless determination of making grand
discoveries.

Now, there have been many assemblages of
the habitations of man, called towns and
cities, which have been overwhelmed by some
catastrophe, or whose very site and foundations
have been swept away; but there are
not many, whose terrestrial locality did not
exist at a very late historic epoch. On the
deltas at the mouths of great rivers, in
recently settled countries, we may look for
new cities to arise; the spongy islands of the
Paranà, and the swamps of the Mississipi,
may, centuries hence, become connected, firm,
and sprinkled over with the congregated
dwelling-places of unborn colonists. If we
take Holland to be, in great part, the delta of
the Rhine, we have an instance of an analogous
process which has taken place in past
ages; but the mouth of the estuary of the
Yare offers a still more modern instance of
human seizure of the stranded spoils of the
waters.

The very recent changes that have occurred
on this spot, are fully proved by Mr. J. W.
Robberds in his "Scenery of the Rivers of
Norfolk;" and he truly states that "natural
appearances indicate that the portion of the
coast of Norfolk, said to have been
distinguished by the invasion of Cerdic the
Saxon, in the year 495, was not in existence
at the remote era when that invasion was
effected." Swinden, too, long since observed,
"All the records of Yarmouth universally
agree, that the place where Great Yarmouth
now standeth, was originally a sand in the
sea, and by degrees, caput extulit undis,
appeared above water and became dry-land."

Dry-land, or make-believe land, might
appear, and yet not be very tempting to resort
to. The temptation first offered here was
that excellent fish, the herring. Attractive
as was the bait, the reader is requested to
remember, in addition, that the new-made
terra-firma, on which the infant Yarmouth was
planted, was not a mud-bank, but a sand-
bank. Wide is the difference in point of
health and comfort. Whether in the African
desert, or in these northern latitudes, on such
a subsoil the air above and the sand below
are both perfectly dry, pure, and wholesome;
no deadly dews and damps to scare the
traveller, or torment the resident with the
dreaming fancy or the waking truth of racked
bones and fevered blood. Vigour and
longevity were thus the inheritance of
Yarmouth. And the county newspapers still
constantly furnish us with instances of good
folks, who cannot be induced to quit this
vale of tears, till they approach or arrive at
their hundredth year. If you bear a grudge
against any particular Insurance Office,
purchase from it a heavy life annuity, go and
live at Great Yarmouth, and draw your
dividends till they ask in despair whether
your name is Old Parr, or Methuselah.

"So," says Manship, "this sand, by diffluxion
of tides, did by little and little lift its head
above the waters; and so, in short time