Read Ebook: Harper's Young People June 6 1882 An Illustrated Weekly by Various

Font size: 10 px 15 px 20 px 25 px 30 px 35 px

Background color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Text color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Apply/Save settings

Ebook has 637 lines and 51501 words, and 13 pages

BY CHARLES BARNARD.

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.

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.

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.

MR. STUBBS'S BROTHER.

Begun in No. 127, HARPER'S YOUNG PEOPLE.

BY JAMES OTIS,

THE ACCIDENT.

That night Toby and Abner went to the circus grounds with Uncle Daniel and Aunt Olive; and when old Ben approached the party, as they were nearing the tent, Toby motioned the cripple to come with him, for he thought it might be better that the boy should not hear the conversation concerning him.

It had been decided by Uncle Daniel that the boys should go to the circus grounds that evening, and stay there until it was nearly dark, when they were to go home to bed; for he did not believe in having boys out after dark, being certain it was better for their health to go to bed early.

Toby therefore intended to make this visit simply one of farewell. But first he wanted Abner to see a little more of the bustle and confusion that had so fascinated him in the afternoon.

To that end the boys walked around the inclosure, listened to the men who were loudly crying the wonderful things they had for sale, and all the while kept a bright look-out in the hope of seeing some of their circus friends.

It was nearly time for the performance to begin when the boys went into the skeleton's tent, and said good-by to the thin man and his fat wife.

Then Toby, anxious to run around to the dressing-rooms to speak with Ella, and not daring to take Abner with him, said to the boy:

"Now you wait here for a minute, and I'll be right back."

Abner was perfectly contented to wait; it seemed to him that he would have been willing to stay there all night, provided the excitement should continue, and as he leaned against one of the tent ropes, he gazed around him in perfect delight.

Toby found Ella without much difficulty; but both she and her mother had so much to say that it was some time before he could leave them to go in search of Ben.

The old driver was curled up on his wagon, taking "forty winks," as he called a nap, before starting on the road again.

When Toby awakened him he explained that he would not have taken the liberty if it had not been for the purpose of saying good-by, and Ben replied, good-naturedly:

"That's all right, Toby; I should only have been angry with you if you had let me sleep. I've fixed it with your uncle about that little cripple; and now, when I get pitched off and killed some of these dark nights, there'll be one what'll be sorry I'm gone. Be a good boy, Toby; don't ever do anything you'd be afraid to tell your uncle Dan'l of, and next year I'll see you again."

Toby wanted to say something; but the old driver had spoken his farewell, and was evidently determined neither to say nor to hear anything more, for he crawled up on the box of the wagon again, and appeared to fall asleep instantly.

Toby stood looking at him a moment, as if trying to make out whether this sudden sleep was real, or only feigned in order to prevent the parting from being a sad one; and then he said, as he started toward the door:

"Well, I thank you over and over again for Mr. Stubbs's brother, even if you have gone to sleep." Then he went to meet Abner.

When he reached the place where he had left his friend, to his great surprise he could see nothing of him. There was no possibility that he could have made any mistake as to the place, for he had left him standing just behind the skeleton's tent.

Toby ran quickly around the inclosure, asked some of the attendants in the dressing-room if they had seen a boy on crutches, and then he went into Mr. Treat's tent. But he could neither hear nor see anything of Abner, whose complete disappearance was, to say the least, very strange.

Toby was completely bewildered by this event, and for some minutes he stood looking at the place where he had left his friend, as if he thought that his eyes must have deceived him, and that the boy was still there.

There were but few persons around the outside of the tent, those who had money enough to pay for their admission having gone in, and those who were penniless having gone home, so that Toby did not find many of whom to make inquiries. The people belonging to the circus were busily engaged in making ready for the night's journey, and a number had gathered around one of the wagons a short distance away. But Toby thought it useless to ask them for tidings of his missing friend, for he knew by experience how busy every one connected with the circus was at that hour.

After he had stood for some time looking helplessly at the tent rope against which he had seen Abner leaning, he went into the tent again for the purpose of getting Uncle Daniel to help him in the search. As he was passing the monkey wagon, however, he saw old Ben--whom he had left apparently in a heavy sleep--examining his wagon to make sure that everything was right, and to him he told the story of Abner's strange disappearance.

"I guess he's gone off with some of the other fellows," said Ben, thinking the matter of but little importance, but yet going out of the tent with Toby as he spoke. "Boys are just like eels, an' you never know where to find 'em after you once let 'em slip through your fingers."

"But Abner promised me he'd stay right here," said Toby.

"Well, some other fellows came along, an' he promised to go with them, I s'pose."

"But I don't believe Abner would; he'd keep his promise after he made it."

While they were talking they had gone out of the tent, and Ben started at once toward the crowd around the wagon, for he knew there was no reason why so many men should be there when they had work to do elsewhere.

"Did you go over there to see what was up?" asked the old driver.

"No; I thought they were getting ready to start, an' I could see Abner wasn't there."

"Something's the matter," muttered the old man, as he quickened his pace, and Toby, alarmed by the look on his friend's face, hurried on, hardly daring to breathe.

One look into the wagon around which the men were gathered was sufficient to show why it was that Abner had not remained by the tent as he had promised, for he lay in the bottom of the cart, to all appearances dead, while two of the party were examining him to learn the extent of his injuries.

"What is the matter? How did this boy get hurt?" asked Ben, sternly, as he leaped upon the wagon, and laid his hand over the injured boy's heart.

"He was standing there close by the guy ropes when we were getting ready to let the canvas down. One of the side poles fell and struck him on the head, or shoulder, I don't know which," replied a man.

"It struck him here on the back of the neck," said one of those who were examining the boy, as he turned him half over to expose an ugly-looking wound around which the blood was rapidly settling. "It's a wonder it didn't kill him."

"He ain't dead, is he?" asked Toby, piteously, as he climbed up on one of the wheels, and looked over in a frightened way at the little deformed body that lay so still and lifeless.

"No, he ain't dead," said Ben, who had detected a faint pulsation of the heart; "but why didn't some of you send for a doctor when it first happened?"

"We did," replied one of the men. "Some of the village boys were here, and we started them right off."

Share on: WhatsApp @Hash Facebook Tweet