Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: September 12, 2025
Some are stationary, fixed to poles in the sea or the estuaries of rivers; some are dropped in a straight line into the water, and allowed to remain there suspended until a shoal of fish, endeavouring to pass, become entangled one by one in the meshes; others are shot in a semicircular form into the sea, and immediately drawn back by both extremities simultaneously to the shore.
They were observed to occur in patches, some of fresh-water, others of marine origin, their geographical area being usually small as compared to the secondary formations, and their position often suggesting the idea of their having been deposited in different bays, lakes, estuaries, or inland seas, after a large portion of the space now occupied by Europe had already been converted into dry land.
But the degradation of their banks, and the transportation of earthy matter to the sea by their currents, are gradually filling up the estuaries even of those mighty floods, and unless the threatened evil shall be averted by the action of geological forces, or by artificial contrivances more efficient than dredging-machines, the destruction of every harbor in the world which receives a considerable river must inevitably take place at no very distant date.
The matter there was even more serious than with us, because not only were the preparations less, but several large sea-coast cities for instance, Barcelona, Malaga, Cadiz lie immediately upon the sea-shore; whereas most of ours are at the head of considerable estuaries, remote from the entrance. The exposure of important commercial centres to bombardment, therefore, was for them much greater.
Before we reached Wolfville we came in sight of this basin and some of the estuaries and streams that run into it; that is, when the tide goes out; but they are only muddy ditches half the time.
Along the whole coast, from the river of Formosa or Benin to that of Old Calabar, about 300 miles in length, there open into the Atlantic its successive estuaries, which navigators have scarcely been able to number.
The West Wind reigns over the seas surrounding the coasts of these kingdoms; and from the gateways of the channels, from promontories as if from watch-towers, from estuaries of rivers as if from postern gates, from passage-ways, inlets, straits, firths, the garrison of the Isle and the crews of the ships going and returning look to the westward to judge by the varied splendours of his sunset mantle the mood of that arbitrary ruler.
The flanks, however, were secured by the York and the James rivers, which here expand to wide estuaries, and the works were strong. Yorktown proved almost as fatal to the invaders as to their English predecessors. Before the historic lines their march was suddenly brought up. McClellan, although his army increased in numbers every day, declined the swift process of a storm.
The boat crews were waiting when they had finished, and they were soon under way. A mile of comparatively slack water brought them out into one of the larger estuaries of the river, and there the long, uphill pull began. O'Neil had equipped his two companions with high rubber boots, which they were only too eager to try.
The Bay at hand, and its estuaries, abounded in trout, hogfish, rock, shad, sturgeon and other edible species in season, not to speak of soft-shell crabs, hard-shell crabs, turtles, terrapin, clams and oysters. Here was food in plenty, but to clear the land for a crop posed a problem to Joseph Ham. He had married a widow with two young children and the family had one servant only a maid.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking