And in Omar's time the Sawâd was no longer at its best, for, a few years before the Arab conquest, abnormally high floods had burst the dykes; from below Hilla to above Basra the Euphrates broadened into a swamp, and the Tigris deserted its former (and present) bed for the Shatt-el-Hai, leaving the Amara district a desert.

" The explanation of this passage has been made simple by the researches of the late Mr. Dykes Campbell.

Just across the North Sea, over the low sand-dykes of Holland, scarce higher than a ship's bulwarks, looked a race whom the spleeny wits of other nations declared to be born web-footed.

But the source of the great body of the sea-language might be marked out on the map by a current flowing out of the Straits of Gibraltar and meeting a similar tide from the Baltic, the two encountering and blending in the North Sea and circling Great Britain, while not forgetting to wash the dykes of Holland as they go.

Or the floods come along an' wreck your dykes; Only thing for a man right then Is to grit his teeth an' start again.

The bed of the river here quite changed its character, the sandstones giving place to granite gneiss, with dark trap dykes intersecting it in a northerly and southerly direction, the dip of the strata being to the west at a very high angle, at times almost perpendicular.

The bed of the river had gradually become more rocky as we ascended, gneiss with quartz dykes passing through it and yielding a large quantity of salt, rendered the running water of the river scarcely drinkable; the only fresh water was found in the back channels filled by the late inundations.

A south course of ten miles over a poor stony country brought us to the head of a stream, which, following in the same direction to latitude 24 degrees 51 minutes 52 seconds, we found plenty of feed on its banks and pools of water in its bed, which was here thirty yards wide; the principal features of the adjacent country being low granite ridges, intersected by occasional quartz dykes, alternating with chlorite schist.

Life: by J.D. Campbell; by Traill (English Men of Letters); by Dykes; by Hall Caine (Great Writers Series); see also Coleridge's Biographia Literaria, and Lamb's essay, Christ's Hospital, in Essays of Elia.

From an inspiration of blended patriotism and despair, the Dutch opened their dykes, overflowed the whole country in possession of the enemy, and thus made Amsterdam impregnable,especially as they were still masters of the sea, and had just dispersed, in a brilliant naval battle under De Ruyter, the combined fleets of France and England.

They were baffled by an unforeseen inundation; and when they were compelled to evacuate the flooded country, the Dutch quietly closed their dykes and pumped the water out again into their canals by their windmills, and again restored fertility to their fields; and by the time Louis was prepared for fresh invasions, a combination existed against him so formidable that he found it politic to make peace.

[Footnote 27: to make dykes or ditches.]

Note-book of Addison's, met with in 1858, Mr. J. Dykes Campbell printed at Glasgow, in 1864, 250 copies of some portions of the first draught of these papers on Imagination with the Essay on Jealousy (No. 176) and that on Fame (No. 255).

Water-dykes were let into the fields on every side, and peasants, with their yokes of oxen, were engaged in bringing water from the wells and streams.

But the Belgian line was most effectively protected by an agency far more powerful than any trench, for over miles and miles of land spread the floods with which the Belgians, by breaking down the dykes, had themselves flooded the country.

The worms that gnawed through the Dutch dykes did Holland more damage than she experienced from the armies of Louis XIV.

In every direction the dykes had burst, and the sullen wash of the liberated waves, bearing hither and thither the floating wreck of fascines and machinery, of planks and building materials, sounded far and wide over what should have been dry land.

When the great William of Orange saw Louis XIV. cover Holland with troops, he said, "Break down the dykes, give Holland back to ocean"; and Europe said, "Sublime!"

The Roman road called the Stanegate runs westward from the North Tyne at Cilurnum, a little to the north of Fourstones railway station, through Newbrough, on past Grindon Hill, Grindon Lough, which it passes on the south, and Grindon Dykes, to Vindolana (Chesterholm) another Roman town, which lies a mile due south from Hot Bank farmhouse on the Wall.

By A. C. Williams & J. Harvey Dykes.

© 26Aug46; AA17657. A. C. Williams & J. Jarvey (sic) Dykes (A); 12Oct73; R561044. R561059.

For days the water streamed off the land, sweeping away soil and trees and houses in the way, and piling huge dykes and scooping out Titanic gullies over the country-side.

Once in the afternoon we stayed our boat, and I climbed to the top of the flood-bank and sate looking out over the wide fen; I saw the long dykes run eastward, the far-off churches, the distant hazy hills; and I thought of all the troubles that men make for each other, adding so wantonly to the woes of the world.

The latter was close to the spot where the observations were made, and where I noticed some trappean dykes intersecting the granite in a North-North-West direction.

No possible theory of inspiration should lead us to look for the submergences of the dykes of thought cast up by race and age and individuality.