I have now told you something, at three different times, about the sea,
the rocks, and the waves. You remember we looked at these things, and
tried to learn something of the way in which the winds and waves have
worked together to carve out the rocks and the dry land. There is
nothing like seeing a thing for yourself, and those boys and girls who
live near the eastern shore of the United States, between New York and
Florida, can easily visit one of the strangest of the strange works done
by the sea.
Along the whole south side of Long Island, beginning at Montauk, all
along the Jersey shore, away down past Little Delaware, Maryland, and
Virginia, Cape Hatteras, and the low sandy shores of the Carolinas and
Georgia, to the Florida Keys, is a most singular beach, built up by the
sea. The odd thing about this thousand-mile beach is that it appears
about to move away. It is continually walking along the coast, up or
down, or forward and backward, as if restless and tired of staying in
one place.
At one time it may have great holes cut through it, and at another time
it creeps along and closes up the gaps, and alters the whole character
of the country behind it. Its queer habit of creeping along the shore in
certain places has given such parts the name of travelling beaches.
Really, I suppose, there are no beaches in the world that do not travel
about at some time. They are all restless things, and while we may not
see them move, we feel very sure they can and do travel for miles
wherever the winds and waves compel them. People who live on these
travelling beaches try to stop them by building heavy stone walls, or by
driving rows of piles across them. They do not seem to care much, and in
some places the sand and rolling pebbles climb over the walls, and
travel on very much as they please. Coney Island is one of these
travelling beaches, Rockaway is another, Sandy Hook is part of another.
The only thing that can stop one of these creeping beaches is a river.
The Hudson River, flowing out of New York Bay, breaks the beach in two
between the Highlands of Navesink and Long Island. There has been a big
fight here between the beach and the river. Coney Island has crept out
like a crooked finger from the east, and Sandy Hook has travelled up for
several miles from the south. If the river were not the strongest, the
beaches would creep out from each side and grow right across the great
bay, and Sandy Hook would touch Coney Island. Then, in place of the wide
bay open to the sea, there would be a long beach, with the ocean on the
outside and a fresh-water lake on the inside.
All the rivers that flow east from the mountains in the Eastern States
below New York Bay have had to fight with this creeping beach before
they could escape into the sea. In some places the beaches have crept
right across the streams, and compelled them to turn aside and go
another way.
[Illustration: NEW JERSEY COAST SOUTH OF SANDY HOOK.]
Here is a map showing one place where long years ago there was a strange
fight between the creeping beach and two poor little rivers. The place
is on the New Jersey shore not far from New York. At the bottom of the
map is a part of the Shrewsbury River. Just north of it is another and
larger stream called the Navesink. Still farther north are the high
hills called the Highlands of Navesink. In front of these two streams
and the hills is a narrow strip of beach, and outside of this is the
Atlantic Ocean. There is a carriage-road and a railroad on top of the
beach, and from the car windows you can see the surf breaking on one
side, and the still waters of the two rivers on the other side. It is so
narrow that often the sea breaks entirely over it, and in the
summer-time you can walk from one side to the other in less than two
minutes. To the north this beach extends to Sandy Hook, and to the south
it stretches for hundreds of miles, with here and there a break, as at
the Chesapeake or at the Delaware Capes, far down to Florida.
Pine-trees grow on it here. Far away to the south the wild palmetto, the
orange-trees, and the bananas grow along the shore.
The strange thing about the place shown on this map is found just where
the two rivers meet. A long time ago--so long that no one can tell when
it may have happened--the rivers ran into the sea just where the beach
is now. Where the hotels and cottages stand was once deep water. There
are two ways in which this may have happened: it may have been a storm
that threw up a bar across the river's mouth, or the creeping beach may
have slowly pushed its way along and closed it up. It may have been both
the storm and the creeping sand. At any rate, we may feel pretty sure
the river was dammed up, and the water, finding no other outlet, turned
to the north, and burst through into Sandy Hook Bay. It cut a path along
the front of the hills, and there we find it to-day, a narrow river
running to the north between the beach and the high-lands. Steam-boats
pass up the Navesink River this way, and a bridge has been built over
the stream to the beach. All this, as it is to-day, is shown on the map.
This creeping motion of the beach is very curious. The waves when the
wind blows from the south or southeast strike the shore obliquely; that
is, instead of rolling in "broad-side," as the sailors would say, or
squarely in front, they strike at an angle. One end of the wave strikes
the bottom first, and the breaking surf seems to run along the beach,
instead of falling all at once, for some distance. The waves, as you
have seen, push the sand along before them, and so it happens that these
southeast waves drive the sand along as well as up the beach. The sand
slides and rolls toward the right, or north, and the beach is said to
creep or travel. If there is an opening in the beach, the waves push the
sand from the south into the opening, and it grows out into the deep
water just as you saw in the picture of the sand-bar. This beach has
already crept three miles out into the water, and made Sandy Hook.
One thing is quite certain. There was at one time a deep channel through
the beach just here. At one time not many years ago a storm broke
through the beach, and a ship, losing its way, ran in there, and was
wrecked. Not a trace of the old hull can be found now. The beach long
ago crept over the place, and to-day the sand makes a solid strip of
land there, just as we see it.
Look at the map again. Opposite the two rivers, outside the beach, you
see a curious tongue or spit running out from the shore. This is under
water, out of sight. The United States Coast Survey sent their boats all
over this place, and measured the depth. The numbers on the map show the
depth of the water in feet. Just here it is shallow. A little farther
north, directly opposite the two rivers, it is much deeper. Again,
farther along, there are more sandy spits and bars running out under
water. This shows that at one time there was a deep channel here between
the two shoals. It is fair to suppose this deep place was the old mouth
of a river. It is said there are even some old teeth left in it yet, for
on the southern spit is a buoy that marks a dangerous place called the
Shrewsbury Rocks. All these things tell us that at one time these two
rivers ran into the sea where now the beach stands, and that the waves
and the creeping sand got the best of the rivers, and altered the whole
face of the country hereabouts. Where once was an inlet and a swift
river is now a beach and a broad shallow-stream, lined with marshes, and
slowly filling up with salt grasses and soft mud washed down from the
red soil of the hills. What will happen next may be quite as strange as
that which has gone before.
Not long ago I sailed for three days and nights along the coast from New
York to Savannah. By day we could see from the steamer's deck trees and
buildings, bath-houses, fishing-houses, and tall light-houses standing
on the western horizon, as if planted in the water. They were on this
same low beach that extends for a thousand miles along our coast. Behind
the beach for nearly all the way there is still water, in lagoons or
great swamps, in narrow streams ashore, or in great inland seas like
Albemarle and Pamlico Sounds. At one place in Florida there is a strange
stream called the Indian River that flows for a hundred miles just
behind the beach, close to the sea, before it finds a way out into the
ocean. In many places steamboats pass along the coast for long distances
behind this sandy fringe that lines the shore. Still more curious is the
low land behind the beach and the still water. It stretches like a vast
plain, growing wider and wider toward the south, far down to Florida. It
is covered with pine-trees, and in some places it is called the
Pine-Barrens, and at other places the Piny Woods Country.
The waves and the creeping beaches have been at work a long time, just
as they are at work to-day. There will always be a struggle between the
rivers at these queer travelling beaches, but which will be the victor
and what will grow out of it all nobody can tell. It makes no difference
after all. Some one may have his pretty house torn down by the waves,
and steamboats may have to change their routes; but the Fatherly
Goodness that controls these things will do what is best for the sea and
the land and all His children.