358 THE GREAT TIDE OF NOVEMBER, 1897.
sea-wall seem to have taken place simultaneously all round the
island, the higher part on which the farm itself stands, with its
pretty grassy slopes and tall trees alone escaping. All the low-
lying portion was rapidly becoming saltings, when I was there
last July; and it was only shortly before my arrival that a gang
of navvies had been set to work to refill the gaps, which months
of neglect had made considerably wider and deeper. The sister
isle of Osey close by escaped a similar devastation, owing to its
greater elevation above the sea level.
Passing on, we found that the whole coast of Dengie
Hundred (a celebrated cereal country) had been overwhelmed;
but here, apparently, the permanent damage was not so great or
the landowners more alive to the peril of losing time and the
repairs were carried out effectually and at once.
Up the Crouch river, where we had least expected it, we
witnessed the most disastrous effects of all. The walls here have
an appearance of great strength and are usually faced with stone,
but even this did not prevent their being undermined,
causing a terrible catastrophe. Just below Fambridge Ferry,
the wall gave way and then collapsed, and the sea rushing in has
penetrated miles inland, even beyond the confines of the railway,
and is only stopped by the higher ground by Snoreham. To the
west the inundation reaches in an unbroken sheet of water to
Woodham Ferrers station, a distance of several leagues. From
the precincts of the tiny Church of North Fambridge one appears
to be standing on an island in some big lagoon, and a good idea
is given of what this part of Essex must have looked like in
ancient days, before the sea walls kept the river within its more
modern bounds.2
But the serious point of this overflow is that since last
November nothing has been done in any way to retrieve the
disaster, and even should the salt waters be finally expelled the
land will remain absolutely useless for many years to come.
Whilst I am writing, a rumour which lacks corroboration
has reached me that at last the matter is to be taken in
hand and the works of reclamation begun, but this postpone-
ment of twelve months duration, will add enormously to the
final labour and cost which now must be expended upon it.
In the Essex Archipelago large tracts of the islands were
desolated, some of them entirely submerged, and one of them,
2 See further remarks on the effects of the flood at North Fambridge by the
Rev. R. F. McLeod and Mr. Kimber in the " Notes " in the present part.—ED.