LAND WON FROM THE SEA.
AMONG the many problems left by the smash of the " Liberator " Companies, that of the present and future. management of the reclaimed lands at Brading, in the Isle of Wight, is the most complicated, though perhaps not the least hopeful. The nature of the appeal made by this wild scheme in the first instance to the daring speculators who, seventeen years ago, embarked the resources of the company in an enterprise of which not only the practical difficulty, but the financial worthlessness, had already been proved by actual experiment, as early as the reign of James I., will probably remain among the unknown factors of commercial failure. The belief in the possibility of getting "Something for- nothing." due to the notion that land won from the sea is s kind of treasure-trove, may have quieted the first misgivings of shareholders. But the fact that Sir Hugh, Myadeltori,. the engineer of the New River, though " c-rafty fox and subtle citizen," as Sir John Oglander noted, had ultimately failed, not only to maintain his reclamation of Brading Haven, but to make it pay while the dam lasted, waa well known in the history of engineq-ing ; and though the mechanical difficulties might be oveicome by modern machinery, the nature of the harbour bottom for the growth or non-growth of crops and grasses could hardly have changed. Briefly, the past history of the Brading re- reclamation was as follows. In 1620, Sir Hugh Myddelton dammed the mouth of the river Tar, at Bembridge, opposite Spithead, and on the seven hundred acres of land so re- claimed he "tried all experiments in it ; he sowed wheat, barley, oats, cabbage-seed, and last of all rape-seed, which proved best ; but all the others came to nothing. "The nature of the ground, after it was inned," wrote Sir John Oglander, "was not answerable to what was expected, for almost the moiety of it next to the sea was a light, running sand, and of little worth. The inconvenience was in it, that the sea. brought so much sand and ooze and seaweed, that these. choked up the passage for the water to go out, insomuch that I am of opinion that if the sea had not broke in there would have been no current for the water to go out, so that in time it would have laid to the sea, or else the sea would- have drowned the whole country. Therefore, in my opinion,. it is not good meddling with a haven so near the main ocean."
This experiment had cost in all £7,000, when the sea broke in ten years later, and Sir Hugh Myddelton'e fields once more became harbour-bottom, and cockles and winkles once more grew where his meagre crops of oats and rape had struggled for existence. Some years later an offer was made to repair. the dam for £4,400, but this fell through. No one thought it worth while to spend the money, though small arms and creeks of the harbour were from time to time banked off and reclaimed by adjacent landowners. The attempt which had baffled Sir Hugh Myddelton was suddenly revived by the Liberator Directors seventeen years ago. The sea was banked out, almost on the lines of Sir Hugh Myddelton's dam, a straight channel of double the size necessary for the mere drainage of the higher levels was cut for the passage of the river and the holding of its waters during high-tide, when the sluices are automatically closed ; and a railway and quay were added, with a hotel at Bembridge. Solid and costly as their- embankment was, the sea broke in, steam-engines and machinery were toppled from the dykes and buried in the mud, workmen were drowned, and the whole enterprise was within an ace of becoming a little Panama. But at last the sea was beaten, 643 acres of weltering mud were left above water, and the reclamation, such as it is, is probably won for ever. Bat. at what a cost ! Four hundred and twenty thousand pounds are debited to the Brading reclamation, of which vast sum
, we may assume that 2100,000 were expended on the railway qttay, and buildings, leaving E320,000 as the price of 643 acres of sea-bottom.
As reclamation of mud-flats and foreshores has lately been much advocated as a means of providing "work and wages," and of adding to the resources of the country, the present -state and probable future of the land won from the sea at Brading is a matter of some interest, omitting all considera- tions of the original cost. We may concede at once that, from the picturesque point of view, the reclaimed harbour is a great improvement on the ancient mud-flats. It has added to the Isle of Wight what seems a piece of Holland, covered with green pasture and grazing cattle. This area is as much withdrawn from the intrusion of man as the old
• lagoon; for as on the mud-flats there were no roads, no rights- of-way, and no footpaths, so the reclamation is a roadless dis- trict, secured absolutely to the use of the occupiers, and incidentally to the wild-fowl which swarm by its shallow pools and drains. The broad embanked river runs straight through the centre, and divides into two the level which lies like a gseen sea between the ring of surrounding bills and the harbour-bank. In this river, the waters of the ancient redamations higher up the valley col- lect daring high-water, when the pressure from the sea automatically shuts the sluices, and pour out during low- tide, when the pressure of the sea is removed, through the iron gates, near which lie, with the grooves still sound and :sharply cut, parts of the sluices made for Sir Hugh Myddelton of English oak in the year 1621. The general shape of the reclamation is an oval, with one of the smaller ends facing the sea, and the other abutting on ancient dams near Brading, two miles higher up the valley. The whole of this has been -converted into firm, dry land; neither is its quality so inferior as Sir Hugh Myddelton judged. Possibly the improvement in the seventeen years during which the old sea-bottom has been exposed to sun and rain, has been proportionately .more rapid than in the ten in which it was exposed to the air after 1620. Then half the area was described as consisting of "light, running sand of little worth," though the upper portion promised to become valuable pasture. Those advo- cates of reclamation of land from the sea, who propose to "leave it to Nature" when the sea has once been barred out, can see at Brading and Bembridge what it is exactly that Nature does, and how far art can help to make old sea-bottom into pasture for cattle, and even into a playground for men and women, in seventeen years. It must be remem- bered that in this case Nature has been hurried, and inade to do her work before her time. Left to itself, the harbour would have silted up in the course of centuries, and the pastures would have grown of themselves, on land already covered with the alluvial mould. As it is, the sea was swept from the land, which had to take its chance as it was,—mud, sand, shingle, or cockle-beds, just as they came. There was not even an earthworm on the whole six hundred acres to move the soil and help the rain to wash the salt out of it. 'The wonder is not that the change has taken place so slowly, but that the change from a soil supporting marine vegetable growth to a soil largely covered with grass, Allover, and trefoil, has matured so quickly. What was -once the head of the bay is now good pasture covered with cattle, and letting for 303. an acre,—there are one hundred and fifty acres of this good ground. Nature had already pre- pared it in part—for it was mud washed from the valley above—and still preserves in contour, though covered with grass, the creeks and " fleets " in which the tide rose and fell. All round the fringes of the flat, where it joins the old shore, the earthworms have descended and made a border of fair soil. On one side sewage has been run into the hungrier soil, and there, on a natural level, the true use and place of such experiments is seen. Three crops of grass a year are cut from ground which otherwise would not fetch more than 5s. an acre,—a hint, perhaps, for the disposal of some of the London "effluent." There remains a portion of dead, sour greensand on which no herbage grows, though the advance of soil and grass may be noted, like the gradual spread of lichen on a tree. Each patch of rushes, each weed and plantain, gathers a little soil round its roots or leaves, and the oasis spreads until all is joined and made one with the better ground. A cattle-farm and nursery garden occupy the centre of the seaward curve. The farm is already surrounded by rich grasses, clover, and sweet herbage, and the garden is a wonder of fertility. Not only vegetables, but roses, chrysan- themums, carnations, lavender, and other garden flowers are there reared in profusion ; and in the present month Matifie8 of mauve veronica are in blossom. In walking over what is now good pasture, the evidences of the recent nature of all this agricultural fertility crop up on every side. Where the turf lies in knolls and hillocks, the sea - shells may still be seen lying bleached or purple among the roots of the grass, and what would be taken for snail-shells elsewhere are found to be little clusters of the periwinkles and mussels for which Brading Haven was once famous. But perhaps the greatest success in the conversion of the old harbour to daily use is the present condition of the "light, running sand" near the sea. This sand must have a stratum of clay beneath it, for groves of poplar trees planted on it are now in vigorous growth. But for some years the land lay barely covered with cup-moss, lichen, and thin, poor grass, a haunt of rabbits and shore-birds. It is now con- verted into a golf-ground, and studded at short intervals with level lawns of fine turf for "putting greens," which daily extend their area, and promise before long to convert the "running sands" into a beautiful and park-like recreation- ground. The beauty of the whole scene is much increased by the number of half-wild swans, which are constantly in movement, either swimming upon the pools and streams, or flying to and from the sea. These swans are among the natural agents busied in aiding the reclamation of the land. They feed almost entirely upon the weeds which would other- wise choke up the dykes, and it is believed that two swans do as much work in keeping the water-ways free and open as could be done by a paid labourer.
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