assert themselves. Sometimes sand silts up as at Southport in
Lancashire, where there is the second longest pier in England, a mile
in length, from the end of which it is said that on a clear day with a
powerful telescope you may perchance see the sea, that a distinguished
traveller accustomed to the deserts of Sahara once found it, and that
the name Southport is altogether a misnomer, as it is in the north and
there is no port at all.

But however much as an Englishman I might rejoice that the actual area
of "our tight little island," which after all is not very tight,
should not be diminishing, it would be a poor consolation to me, if I
possessed land and houses on the coast of Norfolk which were fast
slipping into the sea, to know that in the Fenland industrious farmers
were adding to their acres. And day by day, year by year, this
destruction is going on, and the gradual melting away of land. The
attack is not always persistent. It is intermittent. Sometimes the
progress of the sea seems to be stayed, and then a violent storm
arises and falling cliffs and submerged houses proclaim the sway of
the relentless waves. We find that the greatest loss has occurred on
the east and southern coasts of our island. Great damage has been
wrought all along the Yorkshire sea-board from Bridlington to Kilnsea,
and the following districts have been the greatest sufferers: between
Cromer and Happisburgh, Norfolk; between Pakefield and Southwold,
Suffolk; Hampton and Herne Bay, and then St. Margaret's Bay, near
Dover; the coast of Sussex, east of Brighton, and the Isle of Wight;
the region of Bournemouth and Poole; Lyme Bay, Dorset, and Bridgwater
Bay, Somerset.

All along the coast from Yarmouth to Eastbourne, with a few
exceptional parts, we find that the sea is gaining on the land by