e of the
erection of dams, the remainder of that place, together with
market-towns, villages, and monasteries, to the number of fifty, were
finally overwhelmed. The new gulf, which was called the Dollart,
although small in comparison to the Zuyder Zee, occupied no less than
six square miles at first; but part of this space was, in the course of
the two following centuries, again redeemed from the sea. The small bay
of Leybucht, farther north, was formed in a similar manner in the
thirteenth century; and the bay of Harlbucht in the middle of the
sixteenth. Both of these have since been partially reconverted into dry
land. Another new estuary, called the Gulf of Jahde, near the mouth of
the Weser, scarcely inferior in size to the Dollart, has been gradually
hollowed out since the year 1016, between which era and 1651 a space of
about four square miles has been added to the sea. The rivulet which now
enters this inlet is very small; but Arens conjectures that an arm of
the Weser had once an outlet in that direction.

_Coast of Sleswick._--Farther north we find so many records of waste on
the western coast of Sleswick, as to lead us to anticipate that, at no
distant period in the history of the physical geography of Europe,
Jutland may become an island, and the ocean may obtain a more direct
entrance into the Baltic. Indeed, the temporary insulation of the
northern extremity of Jutland has been affected no less than four times
within the records of history, the ocean having as often made a breach
through the bar of sand, which usually excludes it from the Lym Fiord.
This long frith is 120 miles in length including its windings, and
communicates at its eastern end with the Baltic. The last irruption of
salt water happened in 1824, and the fiord was still open in 1837, when
some vessels of thirty tons' burden passed through.

The Marsh islands between the rivers Elbe and Eider are mere banks, like
the lands formed of the "warp" in the Humber, protected by dikes. Some
of them, after having been inhabited with security for more than ten
centuries, have been suddenly overwhelmed. In this manner, in 1216, no
less than ten thousand of the inhabitants of Eiderstede and Ditmarsch
perished; and on the 11th of October, 1634, the islands and the whole
coast, as far as Jutland, suffered by a dreadful deluge.

_Destruction of Northstrand by the sea._--Northstrand, up to the year
1240, was, with the islands Sylt and Fohr, so nearly conn