'The English Eastern Daily Press has been publishing a series of articles of which this is the first. 'There is so much similarity between the country written about and the lower valley of the Yangtze, that they should be read with great' interest in Shanghai. A
It is but natural that the Dutch should be specialists in the matter of sea defence.
low could it well be otherwise among a people who are such vassals to nature that for centuries they have held the tenure of their country only by dint of incessttat struggle with the winds and waters? A huge proportion of the copie sleep every night with their heads pillowed below the level of the sea. Eight out of the eleven provinces which constitute the Nether lands, more than three-fifths of Lo entire area, are only saved from submergence by constant watchfulness and a highly perfected application of hydraulic principles. What a very singular country! You look from the deck of your steamer upon sleepy homesteads far below you. On country roads you hear the call of boatmen from vessels sailing lazily far above you. The most obvious laws of nature appear to be ina state of suspense. Water is literally made to flow uphill, and everywhere there are rich, habitable ands which, if only by right of the Inw of gravitation, belong wally to the suzerainty of the sen, There are some couplets in Hudibras by which the topsy-tarveydom of the place is siammed up in a nut-shell A country that draws fifty foot of water, In which men live as in the hold of nature, And when the sea does in upon them break, And drown a province, does but spring lal Except on the landward boundaries, of course, and at those points where natural coast defences suffice to keep the sea at bay, the Netherlands, are fringed'. by mighty ramparts, either wholly man-made or partially so, and within these there is a complicated system of canals and sluices, the uses and management of which would Fequire a treatise in itself "The sciontife and costly ingenuity of the system by which the amphibious Dutchman ensures the' continuity of his historic cities and his rich pastures is one of the wonders of civilisation.
We in Norfolk are acquainted with a sea defence in: its rudimentary form. That our proficiency has not been carried to a higher degree is due to the circumstance that we know nothing of perils like those which have again and again inundated to the house-tops whole provinces on: the other side of the North Sea. It goes without saying that Myoheor "Vandunck did not learn all at once and by instinct how to tame the furies of leviathan. Ho acquired his knowledge in the school of experiénte; as we are doing. Quite recently the North Sea has submerged
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.