ClIAl’. V.
213
CIIAR V.
ENGINEERING WORKS IN HOLLAND AND GERMANY .
The level of a great portion of Holland being below that of the sea, the construction ofdykes or banks, to keep out the water has given employment to a vast number of indi-viduals, and called forth the ingenuity of the greatest mathematicians of the age, toeconomise their labours, or to direct them in the most efficient manner.
The dykes are in many places raised 30 feet above the ordinary level of the country, andhave sufficient width at the summit to form a roadway : towards the sea, both above andbelow the level of the action of the water, is a strong matting of Hags, or reeds, whichretains the earth towards the summit of tiie mound, and on the land side, piles and plankingarc adopted, to give the requisite strength ; these are filled in with stones covered with earthand turfed. The matting of flags, of which we have no notice before the end of the six-teenth century, has been found very successful : they arc twisted together in bundles, andlaid horizontally, at distances of three or four yards from each other, and then secured to theground by wooden stakes, or by large stones. Above these layers of flags piles aredriven in, to which a number is attached, that the surveyors or engineers entrusted with themaintenance of the banks may refer. Enormous sums of money have been expended onthose sea-dykes, and when the sea rises to a great height, the inhabitants are obliged tocover them with sails to prevent their washing away : the water which passes over them isafterwards pumped out, either by windmills or other means.
The Rhine , the Leek, the Vaert, the Yssel, the Maes, and other rivers which are dis-charged into the sea on the coast of Holland , have their hanks maintained in a similarmanner. The great Lake of Haarlem, 12 miles long and 9 broad, situate between thetowns of Haarlem , Amsterdam , and Leyden, is remarkable for its sluice, which effectuallyresists the inroads of the sea.
Where the canals in these districts do not unite but arc separated by a dyke, there arecontrivances to transport vessels from one to the other by means of wheels and rollers.
As a great portion of the richest land in Holland has been gained from the sea, it is of thehighest interest to inquire by what means this was effected : the districts in the north consistof the Zype, the Beenister, the Wormcr, and Schermeer. 'I’lie first was commenced aboutthe beginning of the sixteenth century, when an extremely strong embankment or mole,formed of timber, filled in with large stones and covered with earth, was constructed at anenormous cost.
The draining the lakes of Funrnir and Beenister were the next operations carried on,when many thousand acres of the most profitable land in Europe were redeemed, plantedwith orchards, converted into garden ground and meadow. Dugdale, in his “ History ofEmbanking,” gives it as his opinion, that Holland consisted of a three-fold earth ; viz.sandy to the sea, clay to the rivers, and moorish in other places, and that it was the gift ofthe ocean, and of the rivers which pass through it, as was Egypt of the Nile ; and, quotingthe historian Nannius, states, that “ Holland was the gift of the nortli wind and of theRhine , and was in the beginning no other than a more high place than ordinary, over whichthe tides do usually flow; whereby through the increase of the sands, which the northwinds, fiercely agitating the waves, stirred up, it first grew to be a shore, and afterwardsraised those sandy heaps, which tvc daily see both to he made and destroyed.” Andfurther, “that the w’atcrs of the Rhine , by this stop, being kept up as it were with a hank,settled the mud brought down by the stream about the shores, and so by long and frequentinundations produced those pastures. For it cannot he imagined, saith Bertius, that theface of this country was always as it now is discerned to be, or that it soon arose fromits former condition, unto this fertile and pleasant state, in which we behold it at present;there being much time, extraordinary labour, excessive study, vast expenses, and greatdiligence necessary thereto. Nature therefore first inviting, the inhabitants bordering nearunto it to make those banks of sand, as a defence against the north w ind, and necessity alsospurring them on (than which no master is more ingenious and powerful), in time thosetheir accustomed endeavours became a second nature to them, it being not unusual to seethe very boys and girls, wdicn they come to the sea-side to recreate themselves, to putoff’ their stockings and shoes, and taking up the sand with their fingers to make wallstherewith against the ocean, within which, thuji encompassing themselves, they disperse theforce of the waves.”
The Batavians first occupied these districts, then the Danes and Normans , and after-wards the Saxons ; to each of these people some praise is due for the manner in which thefirst embankments have been maintained, and “for the performance of these eminent works,”
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