Sands

“ Year by year that rustling strip of green land grows narrower; the sand spreads and sinks, shuddering and wrinkling like a living brown skin; and the last standing corpses of the oaks, ever clinging with naked, dead feet to the sliding beach, lean more and more out of the perpendicular. As the sands subside, the stumps appear to creep ”

“ Over the entire surface, save the sands upon the shore and the detritus that accumulates in the crannies, there is no earth whatsoever, save what has been artificially created, and even this is for the most part but a few inches deep. ”

“ On those shores and those sandstones, as well as on the rocks of other formations, now raised in many parts of the world thousands of feet above the level of the sea, we find on slabs of hardened stone—clearly and definitely impressed—footprints, ripple markings, worm-borings, rain-drops, and sun-dried cracks refilled with sand,—carrying us back to a time when huge reptiles or great birds haunted in crowds the margins of seas or lakes, and there lived and died, leaving in memoriam their footprints on the sands. ”

“ FOOTPRINTS ON THE SANDS.
There are few amongst us, having the most ordinary habits of observation, who can fail to have had their attention arrested by the fact of the very impressible nature of the sands of our sea-washed coasts and larger rivers. The contemplative habits induced by wandering along the beaches left by a receding tide, divert the mind from its accustomed active exercise, and lead us into trains of thought which seem scarcely to belong to our daily life. ”

“ The long, undulating lines of ridged sand inspire thoughts of hopeless melancholy. The sparse vegetation, which in its struggle for life pathetically seizes and holds the partially fertile spots among these ever-shifting masses, has the appearance of broken submission. The wildly tangled {20}roots—derelicts of the sands—which have been deserted and left to bleach in the sun by the slow movement of the great hills, emphasize the feeling of isolation. ”

“ One feels the intensity and magnitude of even the slightest gust of the sand storm in the vast and trackless waste. There is no need there for magnification. The boundless sea of sands is a sufficient background. ”

“ West and East Girdlers, Margate Sands, Long Sands, Sunk Sands, Goodwin Sands—it seems to be all sand; whilst the soundings are more alarming still—eleven fathoms here, and close against it, one fathom—the English of which is blue lights, rockets, hovellers, lifeboats, and Board-of-Trade inquiries. ”

“ The inland sand plains of Europe are either derived from the drifting of dunes or other beach sands, or consist of diluvial deposits, or are ancient sea-beds uplifted by geological upheaval. As we have seen, when once the interior of a dune is laid open to the wind, its contents ars soon scattered far and wide over the adjacent country, and the beach sands, no longer checked by the rampart which nature had constrained them to build against their own encroachments, are also carried to considerable distances from the coast. ”

“ All sands are here called “beaches,” whether they are waves of water or of air that dash against them, since they commonly have their origin on the shore. “The sand in some places,” says the historian of Eastham, “lodging against the beach-grass, has been raised into hills fifty feet high, where twenty-five years ago no hills existed. In others it has filled up small valleys, and swamps. Where a strong-rooted bush stood, the appearance is singular: a mass of earth and sand adheres to it, resembling a small tower. ”

“ Sands may be uniform when they have been sorted out by some agency such as a gentle current of water or the wind blowing steadily across smooth arid lands, but usually they vary much both in the coarseness of their grains and in their mineral composition. The great source of natural sands is the action of the atmosphere, frost, rain, plants and other agencies in breaking up the surfaces of rocks and reducing them to the condition of fine powder ”

“ The sea has washed the land into them. But more, the sea-currents do not allow the sands of the æstuary to escape freely out to sea. They pile it up in shifting sand-banks about the mouth of the æstuary. The prevailing sea-winds, from whatever quarter, catch up the sand, and roll it up into sand-hills. Those sand-hills are again eaten down by the sea, and mixed with the mud of the tide-flats, and so is formed a mingled soil, partly of clayey mud, partly of sand; such a soil as stretches over the greater part of all our lowlands. ”

“ Weasie, you should have told us to leave our shoes on land and come into the sands barefoot. I suppose that's why all the picture dancers are barefoot [4] on the sands; it's so hard on slippers. There's a barrel. Let's anchor that and divest ourselves. Did you ever see dry land so far away? This sand is as bad as water to plough through. ”

“ Then the waters rippled the sand, - 248 - and the sediments of the tide preserved these ripple marks as they did the rain-drops and the footprints.
But the wind alone, without the help of water ripples, can write its name in the sands of time. And when you get to know the handwriting of wind and wave you will not mistake the one for the other. You are likely to find wind ripples on any big heap of sand. Have a good look at them and then go down to shallow water on a sandy shore and compare the two kinds. That's the way the great men of science do; they notice every little thing. ”

“ Very distinct cross-bedded sands in extensive sheets occur at points as much as one hundred and seventy feet above high tide, in positions where, owing to the contour of the ground, one can not believe that they were formed in any inclosed basin of fresh water. ”

“ Worlds like to that I live on, save that these Seem made of living shades instead of dust; Vast mountains, with tall trees and mighty rocks, And fountains, gushing from their very summits; Huge, towering cliffs, and deep and lonely glens, And wide-mouthed caves that hold a deeper gloom,— With precipices from whose edges soft And silvery cataracts are leaping down ”

“ Thousands upon thousands of holes covered the earth, where men emerged and disappeared like ants, each bearing a bag of sand which he either threw on a wheelbarrow or slung over his shoulder, and then carried forward, running nimbly along the thin paths among a multitude of holes, till he reached the little creek where he delivered the sand to one of the men who stood shoulder to shoulder, in long rows, for miles on either bank, all washing the sand and clay into the shallow current, whose waters were turned to a tint of dirty yellow. ”

“ It is one prodigious expanse of red sand, and sandstone rock, of the granulations of which the red sand consists. It is, in truth, an empire of sand which seems to defy every exertion of human power or industry, although it is interspersed with various islands, and fertile and cultivated spots of different sizes, where water collects in springs or pools, around which vegetation springs up. These places, which present a delightful contrast to the surrounding sterility, and cheer the eye of the weary traveler, are called oases. ”

“ A single drop of water, constantly falling, will hollow out a stone. In these millions of years the water has swept away rocks here, and formed new land by the accumulation of sand there. In these millions of years the sand has been compressed into the gigantic masses that tower above us to-day as sandstone mountains; they are formed of sand that was originally laid like mud, layer by layer, on the floor of the ocean. ”

“ The sands of the desert may be very white and shiny, but I would much rather sow my seeds in black soil, where I can expect a return." ”

“ The sands are the children’s great resort. They cluster there, like ants: so busy burying their particular friends, and making castles with infinite labour which the next tide overthrows, that it is curious to consider how their play, to the music of the sea, foreshadows the realities of their after lives. ”

“ Nor is this surprising, when we remember that all creatures naturally desire something which they have not got. For the bottom of the sea itself is no beach at all, but chalk or sand, and sometimes hardened sandstone, with, I dare say, many precipitous pits and hollows, and many pointed crags. Here, gigantic fronds of the oar-weed wave to and fro among thousands of acres of dulse and bladderwrack ”

“ The sandstone crumbling year by year, attacked by gales and washed by water, drops on the shore an inexhaustible supply of these red-brown stones whose travels begin only in the fall from the parent rock, and end upon the strange isthmus thirty miles away. Matter, like man, plays many a part before it leaves the world’s stage. ”

“ Now a channel cutting right through the sand is, of course, always at its shallowest when it’s crossing this ridge; at low water it’s generally dry there, and it gradually deepens as it gets nearer to the sea on either side. Now at high tide, when the whole sand is covered, the water can travel where it likes; but directly the ebb sets in the water falls away on either side the ridge and the channel becomes two rivers flowing in opposite directions from the centre, or watershed, as I call it. ”

“ I have said that the flat promontory occupied by the ruin is edged by hills of indurated sand. Existing in some places as a continuous bed of a soft gritty sandstone, scooped wave-like a-top, and varying from five to eight feet in thickness, they form a curious example of a sub-aërial formation,—the sand of which they are composed having been all blown from the sea-beach, and consolidated by the action of moisture on a calcareous mixture of comminuted shells, which forms from twenty to twenty-five per cent. ”

“ The stone is four centuries or more old——"
"Mirai Khan," said the girl quickly, "can not see under the sand, can he? He seems to be bent chiefly on stealing horses."
Sir Lionel, however, was not to be turned from the discussion which filled his mind. "You forget the sand that Mary mentions. Captain Gray," he retorted warmly. "This is, literally, a sea of sand. And the waves are rising. We are sure that certain towns in the foothills of the Thian Shan have been buried by these waves. You see, the prevailing winds here are from the east. They drive the sand dunes before them. ”

“ From miles of distance the eye fastens itself upon the tree tops; the dark green is a break in the landscape, and like the black shadow of clouds it seems to go and come, the gentle undulations of the desert throwing it now and again out of sight. We had penetrated but a moderate distance into the desert, but the coming of the oasis was a relief that can hardly be described—those dense groves of date palms and the circulating streams of water. What must, indeed, the oasis be to those who have wearily plodded its sands for weeks at a time! ”

“ And they three passed over the white sands between the 175
rocks, silent as the shadows. ”

“ There, hour by hour, the lazy tide creeps in
Upon the sands I shall not pace again —
Save in a dream, — and, hour by hour, the tide
Creeps lazily out, and I behold it not,
Nor the young moon slow sinking to her rest
Behind the hills; nor yet the dead white trees
Glimmering in the starlight: they are ghosts
Of what has been, and shall be never more.
No, never more!
Nor shall I hear again
The wind that rises at the dead of night
Suddenly, and sweeps inward from the sea,
Rustling the tussock, nor the wekas' wail
Echoing at evening from the tawny hills. ”

“ But I don’t believe you see the hitch. It’s the time and the falling tide. High water was about 8.15: it’s now 10.15, and all those sands are drying off. We must cross the See Gat and strike that boomed channel, the Memmert Balje; strike it, freeze on to it—can’t cut off an inch—and pass that ‘watershed’ you see there before it’s too late. It’s an infernally bad one, I can see. Not even a dinghy will cross it for an hour each side of low water. ”

“ The sea was wet as wet could be,
The sands were dry as dry.
You could not see a cloud, because
No cloud was in the sky:
No birds were flying overhead—
There were no birds to fly. ”

“ She flushed rosily.
"The white man is precious in my sight," she said dearly. "His life is like to the warmth of the sun, and if he dies, my life would pass, even as water vanishes when it is poured upon the sands."
"Verily," pondered Timur, stroking his beard, "is he a brave man. But how then may Wu Fang Chien be appeased?"
Anger flashed into the girl's expressive face.
"So the Wusun are weak of soul," she accused. "Their heart is like the soul of a gully jackal. They would give up the warrior who came to be their friend, to buy their own comfort! Aie! Are you such men?" ”

“ Why else did the white man overcome Gela?"
He turned to Gray, with a moody smile on his lined face.
"Your people, O Man-from-the-Outside, will not find the Wusun, if they send again. That is my thought. The sun passes from the heavens and it is night; the camel leaves his bones to dry in the sands. So will the Wusun pass from Mongolia. The priests of Buddha are powerful. Soon the sands will climb over the walls of Sungan." ”

“ After lunch the large-scale chart of the estuaries was brought down, and we pored over it together, mapping out work for the next few days. There is no need to tire the general reader with its intricacies, nor is there space to reproduce it for the benefit of the instructed reader. For both classes the general map should be sufficient, taken with the large-scale fragment [See Chart A] which gives a fair example of the region in detail. It will be seen that the three broad fairways of the Jade, Weser, and Elbe split up the sands into two main groups. ”

“ We will, next time.” He stopped, and plied compass and notebook. Then we raced on till the next halt was called.
“Look,” he said, “the channel’s getting deeper, it was nearly dry a moment ago; see the current in it now? That’s the flood tide coming up—from the west, mind you; that is, from the Weser side. That shows we’re past the watershed.”
“Watershed?” I repeated, blankly.
“Yes, that’s what I call it. You see, a big sand such as this is like a range of hills dividing two plains, it’s never dead flat though it looks it; there’s always one point, one ridge, rather, where it’s highest. ”