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This country is subject to annual inundations. All the rivers overflow their banks; forests, trees, shrubs, and parasitical plants seem to float on the water, and the sea tinged with yellow clay, adds its billows to the fresh-water streams. Quadrupeds are forced to take refuge on the highest trees: large lizards, agoutis, and pecaries quit their watery dens and remain on the branches.
They promised the co- operation of the States in this most important enterprise of their ally, notwithstanding their great losses in the war just concluded, and the diminution of revenue occasioned by the inundations by which they had been afflicted; for they were willing neither to tolerate so unjust an usurpation as that attempted by the Emperor nor to fail to second his Majesty in his generous designs.
He was on the point of issuing, but without his signature, an official statement cautioning the public against unprecedented inundations, when the first tidal wave arrived on the Atlantic coast and rendered any utterance of that kind unnecessary. People's eyes were opened, and now they would look out for themselves.
To expect, under these circumstances, that such words would assuage the tempest, that such actions would allay the flames, you might as rationally expect the inundations of a torrent would suppress a deluge, or rather that the flames of Aetna would extinguish a conflagration!
Consequently all are provided with lacustrine reservoirs of greater or smaller extent, and are subject to periodical inundations, varying in season, according as the sun is north or south of the line. For the same reason the reverse is the case with the two southern arteries; their high water, with certain limitations in the case of the Congo, is in our winter.
The destruction of the bulwarks against the ocean had been so extensive, in consequence of the voluntary inundations which have been described in previous pages, and by reason of the general neglect which more vital occupations had necessitated, that an enormous outlay, both of labor and money, was now indispensable to save the physical existence of the country.
Flourishing towns of the Zuyder Zee Gulf disappeared under water; the islands of Zealand were repeatedly covered by the sea and then again left dry; the villages on the coast from Helder to the mouths of the Meuse were frequently submerged and ruined; and in each of these inundations there was an immense loss of life of both man and beast.
Another peculiarity is very remarkable; it is, that after the rains have entirely ceased, these burns have their largest flow, and cause inundations. It looks as if towards the end of the rainy season the sponges were lifted up by the water off their beds, and the pores and holes, being enlarged, are all employed to give off fluid. The waters of inundation run away.
"Yes; but those very inundations carried away the bridge, so that it was impossible to cross the Theiss." "It was a pity, truly, that the water carried away the bridge, but if the dyke had been kept in proper repair, the water would not have got at the bridge." "Never mind; rely upon me in the future. Go on!"
Thoroughfares lying close by the Thames, which were wont to suffer from inundations, were raised; those which from limited breadth had caused inconvenience and bred pestilence were made wide; warehouses and dwellings of solid brick and carved stone, with doors, window-frames, and breastsummers of stout oak, replaced irregular though not unpicturesque habitations; whilst the halls of companies, eminent taverns, and abodes of great merchants, were now built "with fair courtyards before them, and pleasant gardens behind them, and fair spacious rooms and galleries in them, little inferior to some princes' palaces."
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