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Updated: May 24, 2025
"History tells us," says Mengotti, "that the Nile became terrible and destructive to ancient Egypt, in consequence of being confined within elevated dikes, from the borders of Nubia to the sea.
In an age when learning was confined to the few, they were not more illiterate than the corresponding class in other countries. 'In the summer the men were continually employed in husbandry. They cultivated chiefly the rich marsh-lands by the rivers and the sea, building dikes along the banks and shores to shut out the tides; and made little effort to clear the woodlands.
The majorities in each were still well disposed, and still frequently, notwithstanding the chasm that separated the parties, joined hands in a common endeavour to effect the removal of the worst evils. But, while they did not stop the evil at its source, it was to little purpose that the better-disposed listened with anxiety to the dull murmur of the swelling flood and worked at dikes and dams.
Pantagruel had with him Panurge, Friar John des Entomeures, alias of the Funnels, Epistemon, Gymnast, Eusthenes, Rhizotome, Carpalin, cum multis aliis, his ancient servants and domestics; also Xenomanes, the great traveller, who had crossed so many dangerous roads, dikes, ponds, seas, and so forth, and was come some time before, having been sent for by Panurge.
When the proud Danish king was told that Sture was collecting an army of peasants with which to fight him, he sneeringly said: "Herr Sten sneaks along ditches and dikes, but I shall punish my little gentleman with the rod like a child, and teach him to keep himself quiet."
The duke de Vendôme ordered the dikes between Bruges and Newport to be cut, so as to lay the whole country under water, in hopes of destroying the communication between Ostend and the camp of the confederates; and, after a regular siege, he took colonel Caulfield, and a body of British troops posted in the village of Leffinghen, by whose means the convoys had been forwarded to the duke of Marlborough.
These ideas were then spreading through the multitude, and when resisted, they broke through their dikes, and burst onward with greater violence. The character of Antony, eager, thirsting for novelty, was the expression of his age: he abandoned himself to the dreams of an ardent soul, and only sought whither to carry himself and his accumulations of knowledge.
No more low, wet grounds, no more dikes and sluices, no more of these grazing cattle, though they seemed, in their dull manner, to wear a more respectful air now, and to face round, in order that they might stare as long as possible at the possessor of such great expectations, farewell, monotonous acquaintances of my childhood, henceforth I was for London and greatness; not for smith's work in general, and for you!
Under their erosive influence the original mountains were cut down somewhat, but the erstwhile molten material, being, as we have said, fire-hardened, wasted very little, or not at all, and, as a consequence, stands forth above its present surroundings in exact mould of the ancient cracks or holes. Now, some dikes are long and narrow, others are short and wide, and still others are nearly round.
The city of Astrakhan, placed on the left bank of the main channel of the Delta, and, as I said, 150 versts above its anchorage, becomes like an island in the midst of a vast sea when the Volga comes down in its might with the thaw of the northern ice in late spring; and most of its lowest wards would be overwhelmed were it not for the dikes that encompass it like a town in Holland.
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