Reclamation work in Holland

Abstract

Abstract According to cable news published in one of the daily papers. the Dutch Parliament will shortly consider a scheme for reclaiming 815 square miles of the Zuyder Zee, and converting the remainder into a fresh-water lake. In view of this proposed action, the story of the struggle with the sea that has from ancient times been waged in Holland, as it appears in the papers and discussion presented some time ago to the Institution of Civil Engineers (England) under the title “Winning of Coastal Lands in Holland,” by Mr. A. E. Carey, is one that must interest a wider circle of readers than engineers merely. As the folklore of a nation teaches us the inner life, so this stolid, tireless fight with the forces of the North Sea reveals to us the characteristics of the Dutch race; we admire their dogged perseverance and congratulate them on their great success. But this success has not been achieved without some defeats and disasters of the most appalling nature, sufficient to daunt the very stoutest hearts, but in their case acting merely as a spur to fresh efforts. It is recorded that in 1421. the bursting of a dam caused the loss of 20,000 lives, that in 1750 a severe storm from the north-west breached several dams and. also caused 200,000 persons to perish ; and that the cataclysm whtch resulted m the formation of the Zuyder Zee engulphed no fewer than 780,000 people. Within historic times, in fact, scarcely any part of the lower sections of the country has escaped submergence at one time or another; and what this statement signifies may be realised when it is remembered that only one-third of the whole of Holland, i.e., the south-east portion, stands more than about three feet above the average high-water mark, and that the rest of the country is mostly below it. Two-thirds of Holland, therefore, even to this day, is perpetually exposed to destruction, but is saved from it only by perpetual vigilance and the scientific efforts made to keep the sea at bay. The advance in engineering skill added to the long experience of the Dutchman in this class of work are better safeguards at the present day than he ever had before; and the greater abundance of wealth in the country, by affording the sinews of war, helps him better than ever before not only in building and maintaining more secure works of protection, but in planning bold schemes of further reclamation that promise to add in the near future vast areas to the circumscribed limits of this little State. The State is no more than “the alluvium of a system of vast rivers and estuaries, and its superficial deposits are the product of ice-borne debris from wide areas” It is the newest formed country of Europe. it is not yet consolidated and is still settling down at the rate of 7 1/2 inches in a century. Before the era of dikes and embankments the pioneers threw up artificial mounds 30 to 40 feet high on which they lived while carrying on the work of reclamation; they spent the summer so occupied and in the winter retired to the higher grounds of the south-east. These operations seem to have commenced in the 12th century, since which time 250,000 acres of agricultural land have been added to the area of Holland at the mouths of the Maas and Scheidt.