he
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
leaps and bounds. It is a coast that is most favourably constructed
for coast erosion. There are no hard or firm rocks, no cliffs high
enough to give rise to a respectable landslip; the soil is composed of
loose sand and gravels, loams and clays, nothing to resist the
assaults of atmospheric action from above or the sea below. At
Covehithe, on the Suffolk coast, there has been the greatest loss of
land. In 1887 sixty feet was claimed by the sea, and in ten years
(1878-87) the loss was at the rate of over eighteen feet a year. In
1895 another heavy loss occurred between Southwold and Covehithe and a
new cove formed. Easton Bavent has entirely disappeared, and so have
the once prosperous villages of Covehithe, Burgh-next-Walton, and
Newton-by-Corton, and the same fate seems to be awaiting Pakefield,
Southwold, and other coast-lying towns. Easton Bavent once had such a
flourishing fishery that it paid an annual rent of 3110 herrings; and
millions of herrings must have been caught by the fishermen of
disappeared Dunwich, which we shall visit presently, as they paid
annually "fish-fare" to the clergy of the town 15,377 herrings,
besides 70,000 to the royal treasury.

The summer visitors to the pleasant watering-place Felixstowe, named
after St. Felix, who converted the East Anglians to Christianity and
was their first bishop, that being the place where the monks of the
priory of St. Felix in Walton held their annual fair, seldom reflect
that the old Saxon burgh was carried away as long ago as 1100 A.D.
Hence Earl Bigot was compelled to retire inla