THE SAND-HILLS BY THE SEA.
THE difference between the sea-sands which we love and play with, and the desert-sands which are terrible and feared, lies in the presence or absence of the friendly sea. For however they were first made, the sands of the desert owe their increase, like their motion, to the work of the wind, which is always cutting fresh particles from the matrix of sandstone rock, and driving their unnumbered atoms to swell the dust of the desert. But by the sea four agents are always working to cut down the solid sandstone cliff and increase the mass of shifting grains. The wind rasps the face of the cliff, and grinds its surface lower at every gale. The waves of the sea cut away its feet and knees and undermine the bottom. The rain washes off what the wind has loosened ; and lastly, the frost works at the back of the cliff like a crowbar, and sends flake after flake of the surface sliding to the sea. Those universal levellers, the sea-waves, then apply this sand, in a process analogous to the "equalisation of rates," to shores which have no cliffs at all, if so be that the waves can find them near and handy, and there, with the aid of the wind, make the " sand-hills " according to their joint power, and leave the rain to cover them first with sea-plants and then with the beautiful and peculiar growths which make sand-hill gardens one of the wonders of the world.
At the close of the great frost, by the long line of sand- cliffs which run from Branksome Chine to the spit of broken, heath-covered sand-hills which divide Poole Harbour from the sea, the recent work of all these natural activities, as well as the beauty of the sand-hill garden, were seen in that repose which follows a long period of frost and storm. Though the sun was shining bright and warm upon the long yellow cliff, the yellow beach, and flashing from the broken surface of the sea, the balance of Nature had hardly been restored. The gulls had deserted the waves for the gardens and streets of Bournemouth, while there on the narrow sand- strip below the cliffs, their hoofs splashing the salt water, were lines of race-horses, frozen out from the Newmarket downs, and galloping, as they had for weeks, on the only unfrozen portion of England, the sun-warmed, sea-saturated margin of the southern shore. The long procession of galloping horses, passing between the level lines of sea and sand, looked like a portion of some classic frieze. Did Achilles, we wonder, ever give his stud a change from the waters of Scamander by sending them for a gallop along the sandy shore of Troy P
The sea was as calm as it is possible for the Channel waters to be. Tiny waves, no higher than the horses' fetlocks, curved and broke in little petulant curls, with just so much insistance as made the racers lower their heads to sniff the salt splashes. There was neither wind nor rain nor running water to touch the cliff, for the land-springs were still frozen. Yet the work of the frost upon the scarp was seen in evidence from moment to moment. Here, there, high and low, land- slips large and small were incessantly detaching fragments of cliff. In one place a few inches, in another a foot, in others yards of loosened grit, were slipping and falling in dust down to the shore. Everywhere there was a soft sound like the falling of flour from the shoots below the grindstone of a mill. On the cliff-top lay the record of another form of this insensible destruction,—the work of the early storms, preserved in places by the snow, so that its dimsnsions might have been measured. The great gale from the south-east,
whose effects upon the sea-fowl were described in the Spectator of January 19th, had cut the sand from the cliff, and driven it up, over the crest, on to the snow. There it had lain, frozen in, until the snow melted, and let the sand, crusted, moistened, and compact, down upon the paths, the leaves, and the fallen pine-trunks, where it lay for the moment, measurable in bulk and in the general depth of its layers, an indication of the work done by wind in a given period in wearing away the surface of the cliff. The film was so thin that it barely equalled the depth of the paper on which we write, and the calculation seems to mock inquiry, though the sand must win at last :—
" Te mans et term m numeroque carentis arenx, Mensorem colubent, Arch3 ta,
Pulveris exigui p:ope litus parva Matinum Munera."
Sea, storm, and frost have worn away the western end of the cliffs, and there uncovered lay the backbone and ribs of a shattered ship, waiting, like Archytas' bones, for the sand to cover them. Standing by the skeleton of this unburied, vertebrate thing, with its broken ribs still fast to its back- bone, along which rolled the little sportive waves, lay the fresh corpse of another and a larger ship, the victim of the January storm. Its paint was fresh and green, the white deck-houses and hatches shone in the winter sun, the gilded letters of its name were still fresh upon the stern, and its living crew a line of cormorants sitting on the bulwark-rail. The record of the ancient wreck is lost. That of its successor is fresh, and touched with more than the common pathos of the story of shipwreck. She was a three-masted ship, on her voyage from Cuba to Northern Germany, her crew, it was said, still brown with the sun of Havannah, when she was caught by the Arctic gale. Failing to gain the shelter of the Solent, she drifted into the Bournemouth bay, and made for the narrow entrance of the old pirate port of Poole. English seamen knew that the attempt was hopeless, and the telegraph sent the Swanage lifeboat to the rescue, from far beyond the cliffs of St. Alban's Head. In the "race" which runs round "Old Harry Rock" the lifeboat was swamped, and its brave cox- swain drowned. The crew of the Poole lifeboat then forced their way down, and took off the men, who they knew would have frozen to death if left through the night with the sea beating over them. Both crews suffered much in the work of rescue. The man who was drowned in this work of pure philanthropy was not forgotten. Sixteen hundred pounds were subscribed for his family by the people of Bournemouth, Swanage, and the neighbourhood.
The long narrow spit which runs from the old wreck to the narrow mouth of Poole harbour is a beautiful example of sand-hills, made and making. Thither the sea has carried what it has stolen from the cliffs, and piled it on the land. The newest and loosest of the sand-hills are those nearest to the east, and it is clear that there the sea must have often broken over into the wide lagoon within. The sand still shifts with the wind, though the bennet- grass is rapidly growing in the hollows, and giving shape and consistency to the mass. This grass is the strangest pro- duct of the shore. It grows in outward curving crowns, like dried rushes, of the colour of an olive. How it roots in the sand, or gets moisture to keep it fresh, is a mystery. In the hollows it is thick and almost luxuriant. On the hills it grows in scattered tufts, often covered with drifted sand, which never seems to injure or choke it. In places the sea- sand lay driven in piles like snow, fresh smoothed by the sea-breeze of the night before. These fresh heaps were marked all over with the tracks of mice and rats, though what they find to eat on this sandy shore is hard to guess.
Farther on, towards the harbour mouth, are the more ancient sand hills, tall broken piles and ridges rising to forty or fifty feet high, with valleys and hollows, all covered with deep heather, yellow grass, and here and there with twisted pines. Even in winter the colour is deep and rich,—brown and purple, with patches of bright-green dry moss. On one side of this promontory lie the many lagoons of Poole Harbour, lake within lake, cut out from the land, and from the deep depression behind the isle of Purbeck, called the "Trough of Poole," with a scalloped outline like that of a straggling bunch of grapes. The lagoons stretch far back beyond the projecting headlands, studded with islands, bare, or pine-covered, and lost to the sight beyond the masts of the
Poole shipping, miles up the harbour, and westwards winding to the grey keep of Corfe Castle. Outside lie the blue waters of the Channel, and the opposing crags of Freshwater and St. Alban's Head, the first with three outposts, the Needle rocks, the latter with one avant.guarde, the chalk pillar of "Old Harry." Poole Harbour was scarcely clear of ice. Daring the frost it had been closed like the Baltic, and all the picturesque sailing craft which still trade with the old port had lain icebound for weeks. Now they were making for the sea, and brigs, sloops, and schooners with half-sail set were dropping down with the tide and rounding the sand spit in procession for the open sea.
The process by which what were heaps of shifting sand became firm mounds, covered with heather bushes, tall grass, and moss, is difficult to realise. The bennet grass forms the first step. In the hollows another, finer grass then seems to grow, and the sand becomes smooth and firm. Between the patches of this grass a green dry moss next appears, with a tough stem inside its soft fronds. This moss appears to grow from spores, where the slightest damp remains on the sand. It was springing up in tiny velvet knobs where the melting snow had just sunk into the sand. Its roots are not deep, but form a matting just below the surface of the sand, which catches every drop of moisture and prevents it sinking. Round each bunch of heather were the round seed shells, or dead blossoms, lying lightly piled on the hard sand, like seed- pearls shaken level in a tray. By the inner shore, next the estuary, the sand was even covered with fine turf on which sheep might have fed. On the "Dover," at Bembridge, in the Isle of Wight, the whole of what was a shifting sand-hill, is now such turf, in parts wholly made of the netted leaves of sea-pink. The giant sea-convolvulus also grows among the sand-hills, with the sea-pink, sea-poppy, and sea-holly. But in few places are the sand-hills so beautiful as those which shut in the eastern bight of Poole Harbour. There you see them both made and making, and if visited in August, when the sea is blue and the sand-hills purple with heather, they take the palm of beauty among the bulwarks of the shore.
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