Norwich bulletin., 1916-04-11
THE WAR PRIMER By National Geographic Society

Forces of Nature-"while civilized man is engaged in the mightiest clash of arms the world has ever witnessed there are other forces also at war. And while there is hope that the great human saturnalia may soon end, there is no such hope in the great struggle of the forces of nature, for it is a truceless war that the waters of the world are waging against its lands.
 MT. John Oliver La Gorce, Associate Editor of the National Geographic So- clety, has recently prepared for that | institution study of this striking | struggle between the earth and the sea with the shorelines of the world as the far flung theatre of war.
 ] After calling attention to the fact that the processes which have trans | formed the polar regions from dense | JunSles of tropical growth into lands | of perpetual ice and snow, which have | brought the tops of mountains to the | bottom of the sea and the bottom of | the sea to the tops of mountains, are | still going, on, although the hands up l on the face of the clock of geology | move so slow that we can not perceive their movement, MT. LaGorce contin- | ues:
 "Along every coast line on the face | of the earth there is perpetual war fare between the land and the sea- with the wind as the shifting line, now
 
 on the one side and now on the other.
 Here the land is taking the offensive,
 driving the sea back foot by foot all
 ways with the aid of the wind; there
 the sea marshals a great drive and
 eats its way landward slowly and lab
 oriously, but none the less successfully.
 The varying fortunes of this relent
 less and SaSe-long war, which neither
 truce nor treaty will ever bring to an
 end, can be read in the shifting sands
 of the seashore. At many points along
 the coast of the Northeastern States
 are found bold cliffs and the charg-
 ing sea attacks them with the shot and | shell of loose shingles. Some of them I however, are adamant and impreg- , nable in their frontal Notifications and ! hold out against the sorest seize, but ! between them have occurred stretches of softer rock which have been liter \ ally pounded to dust by the oceans , heavy artillery, thus permitting flank attacks on the hitherto unconquered 7 defenses.
 Along the southeastern coast, how , ever, the rock-bound cliff is the ex- 2 ception and the long stretches of gilt tcring sand the rule. Here the sandy . beach reaches out farther and farther ! into the sea, and the water is thus en- ' | abled to penetrate farther and farther into the land, because the attack of the I sea is usually a frontal movement and II that of the land frequently a wedge ? aTtack; thus we can account for tho ' long straight shore on the one hand II and the split on the other.
 The formation of the beach immed. $ lately guarded by the Cape Henry T light is not changing so rapidly as i: Il the case only a few miles on either side because of its somewhat pro. n tected position, due to the many sanC ; bars or reefs far out from shore - which, acting as the first trenches
 serve to break the charge of tn, y white horses of Father Neptune a. 2 they dash in from the ocean, and. be 'I cause of this knowledge Of defense, l. is plain to be seen that a good guar ter of a mile of beach has been add ed by the defended since the old ligh n was erected.
 1f "Rockaway Beach. Long Island s. grows westward at the rate Of nearl. mile every 20 years. At Nag Head y North Carolina, the land has extend :. ed into the sea at the rate of Sj fee II year. In 1894 pr. Nathaniel Bow > ditch prepared a cliart of Salem an, n Marolehead harbOrs, giving the sound r. ings over various lodges of rock pr Ninety years later similar sounding IS were taken, and in all cases the wate le was found to be considerable deeper re once again telling the tale of endies in warnings.
 "On the shore of Cap Cod. nea re Chatham, the land is retreating a re the rate of foot year, and on tn y. southern shore of Martha's Vinegar
  SC at the rate of three feet every 1 d. months. while on the southern face ( Ee N2ntucket the retreat has been a Iy much as six feet year, the record he tell us.
 on Tn it's incessant warfare againl IL the land, the sea literally takes il
 captured hosts, and makes them d mt battle under its command. IT us boulders that are shattered from Il ef face of a cliff are dashed up again! n in han as-S., he loose, the while being worn round ar Tt smooth as the projectiles of big guT
 must be. As the process goes O to thse hugs shells are worn down ar e. crumbled until there remains nOtl s- ing to tell the story of forced fghtir ITS against their own stronghold, saN zee grains of sand on some distant beaC ow or the soft carpet spread upon Il if floor of the sea many fathoms deep
 How rapidly this process goes an is sometimes strikingly shown. on schooner laden with bricks is beach, ne on some bare shore in a storm; the he bricks are rolled and tumbled Q di nut tance of five miles or so in the cOur to of a year, and by that time attritiC .ry has usually completed its work. Al 'ge thOrities say that on the shores
 Cape Ann fragment of stone as b ile as nail keg has been worn complet Ike ly round by its constant turning du go ing the course of but five years. he Some years ago there was di os- covered in the British Records Oh K an elaborate map of the North Amer of can coast from Cape Cod to the Nav at sink Hills, which is believed to da
 from about 1715. It gives a wonde
 full illustration of the changes that . coastline may undergo in 200 year
 To begin with, it shows that Ca
 Cod was at that time an island, al
 that near the point where the natuI - passage from the Atlantic to Ca
 Cod Bay. The point is located whe ,rd the channel existed, and the folloV 1at ing notation was put in by a Britt cal ocer. probably Capt Cypian Sout re- back, sent out to capture Bellan 7c- the pirate:
 In- ''Ye place where came through list with a whale-boat being ordered cir by ye Governor to look after ye ich pirate ship. Whide, Ballamy TO- Commander, castaway ye 26th the day of April, TIT, where ex- buried one hundred and two meu ms drowned"
 5a On this chart the islands oP Na