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But in 1907 the sea asserted itself, and "burst through the stony barrier, making a passage for the exit of the river one mile further north, and leaving a vast stretch of shingle and two deserted river-channels as a protection to the Marshes of Hollesley from further inroads of the sea." Formerly the River Alde flowed direct to the sea just south of the town of Aldeburgh.
Rivers and meadows are filled up, sand covered, and ruined. Forests are thrown down, to rot by wholesale. Tunnels are blasted out. The face of nature is gashed with the quest for gold. Banded together for destruction, the miners leave no useful landmark behind them. All is washed away and sent seaward in the choking river-channels.
The most important of the ancient river-channels in this region is a section that extends from the south side of the town beneath Coyote Creek and the ridge beyond it to the Cañon of the Stanislaus; but on account of its depth below the general surface of the present valleys the rich gold gravels it is known to contain cannot be easily worked on a large scale.
Throughout a large part of Europe we find at moderate elevations above the present river-channels, usually at a height of less than 40 feet, but sometimes much higher, beds of gravel, sand, and loam containing bones of the elephant, rhinoceros, horse, ox, and other quadrupeds, some of extinct, others of living, species, belonging for the most part to the fauna already alluded to in the fourth chapter as characteristic of the interior of caverns.
Yet we by no means need the evidence of the ancient fossil fauna to establish the antiquity of Man in this part of France. The mere volume of the drift at various heights would alone suffice to demonstrate a vast lapse of time during which such heaps of shingle, derived both from the Eocene and the Cretaceous rocks, were thrown down in a succession of river-channels.
Now the Aru Islands are all coral rock, and the adjacent sea is shallow and full of coral, it is therefore evident that they have been elevated from beneath the ocean at a not very distant epoch. But if we suppose that elevation to be the first and only cause of their present condition, we shall find ourselves quite unable to explain the curious river-channels which divide them.
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