The Flemish coast, from the frontiers of France to the frontiers
of Holland, is throughout the same in appearance. The sea rolls
in and breaks upon the yellow beach, which extends from east to
west for some seventy kilometres in an irregular line, unbroken
by rocks or cliffs. Above the beach are the dunes, a long range
of sandhills, tossed into all sorts of queer shapes by the wind,
on which nothing grows but rushes or stunted Lombardy poplars,
and which reach their highest point, the Hoogen-Blekker, about 100
feet above the sea, near Coxyde, a fishing village four or five
miles from Nieuport. Behind the dunes a strip of undulating ground
('Ter Streep'), seldom more than a bare mile in width, covered with
scanty vegetation, moss, and bushes, connects the barren sandhills
with the cultivated farms, green fields, and woodlands of the Flemish
plain. On the other side of the Channel the chalk cliffs and rocky
coast of England have kept the waves in check; but the dunes were,
for many long years, the only barrier against the encroachments
of the sea on Flanders. They are, however, a very weak defence
against the storms of autumn and winter. The sand drifts like snow
before the wind, and the outlines of these miniature mountain ranges
change often in a single night.
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