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As for the hunter and Richard, they had made a discovery which might stand for what it was worth. At its lower extremity the sunken valley was separated from the great gorge without only by a ridge which was no more than a huge dam; and this diking ridge was evidently tunneled by the stream, since the latter had no visible outlet.
During a number of years past enterprising individuals have undertaken to reclaim small tracts on these islands by diking them, but with not encouraging success, and it was not until a law was passed empowering the majority of owners of overflowed lands in any place to form a reclamation district, choose a Board of Reclamation, and levy a tax upon all the land in the district, for building and maintaining the dikes or levees that these lands really came into use.
At this point, acting under a sudden inspiration, they began to cut the dike. Almost instantly a breach began to appear, under the attack of a dozen diking spades wielded with feverish energy. An involuntary cry of consternation went up from the group of Acadians on the knoll, but the grim abbe shouted, "Well done! Well done! my brave, my true Laberne!"
How proud he would have been of both of you!" And her eyes filled with tears. Next day Will and Ted armed themselves with diking spades, and set to work determinedly. They had the old horse, Jerry, on the spot, harnessed to a light cart, ready to haul material as wanted. They began at the lower end of the cove, building upward from the corner of the old dike.
He made rapid but reliable topographical measurements, on a general scale, of the mesa for five miles out from the mountains, between Bartolo and Perro Creek, locating among other things a large depression in the plain, three miles southwest of the town, which might by diking be converted into a flood water reservoir. Then he folded his tent and again disappeared for a week.
When it has risen to high-water level, it is soon covered with grasses, and becomes what is called schor in Zeeland, kwelder in Friesland. Such grounds are the foundation or starting-point of the process of diking. When they are once elevated to the flood-tide level, no more mud is deposited upon them except by extraordinary high tides.
Trees grow very rapidly, and it will be many years before such fruits as the cherry, plum, apricot, or the raisin-grape are too abundant to yield to their owners exceptionally large profits. While you are talking about redeeming the New Jersey marshes these go-ahead Californians are actually diking and reclaiming similar and, in some cases, richer overflowed lands by the hundred thousand acres.
Let the War-duke rule as is but right: but I am now become a man of Thiodolf's company; and he bade me haste on before to help all I might. Do thou as thou wilt, Otter: for Thiodolf shall be here in an hour's space, and if much diking shall be done in an hour, yet little slaying, forsooth, shall be done, and that especially if the foe is all armed and slayeth women and children.
On the other hand, by erosion of the coast-line, the drifting of sand-dunes into the interior, and the drowning of fens and morasses by incursions of the sea all caused, or at least greatly aggravated, by human improvidence the Netherlands have lost a far larger area of land since the commencement of the Christian era than they have gained by diking and draining.
He finds out, soon enough for his weal and his bane, that he is stronger than Nature; and right tyrannously and irreverently he lords it over her, clearing, delving, diking, building, without fear or shame. He knows of no natural force greater than himself, save an occasional thunder-storm; and against that, as he grows more cunning, he insures his crops. Why should he reverence Nature?
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