On the other hand, S. Pritchard,[2516] the historian, so called, of Deal, argues that the sands must have existed ‘from all time’ as otherwise Deal and the adjoining country would inevitably have been inundated. Why? The island, the former existence of which is assumed by Sir Charles Lyell, would have been as good a protection as the sands; and in the time, which was certainly anterior to the Roman invasion of Britain, when the shingle bank had not accumulated to a sufficient height,[2517] the very small area in the neighbourhood of Deal which is below high-water mark may have been inundated, unless, as Dowker[2518] and Mr. Spurrell[2519] believe, the level of the land has been depressed since the Roman occupation.
The reader has doubtless already concluded that it is impossible to affirm either that the Goodwin Sands existed in the time of Caesar, or that they had not then accumulated to such a degree as to attract attention, or that their place was occupied by an island. If the silence of Domesday Book and, as it should seem, the absence of any other positive testimony constitutes an argument against the hypothesis of Sir Charles Lyell,[2520] the same argument may be advanced to show that before the Norman Conquest the sands had not begun to appear. Yet, as we shall see in a subsequent article, there is some reason to believe that either sands or an island were there when Caesar invaded Britain.[2521] Tradition, vague as it is, combined with Lyell’s authority, disposes me to accept tentatively the latter alternative.
IV. THE SOUTH FORELAND AND THE DOVER CLIFFS
Professor Montagu Burrows[2522] affirms that ‘the space over which the tides travel [in the Straits of Dover] must be at least two miles wider than it was some 2,000 years ago’. This is one of the ex cathedra statements in which the professor’s work abounds, and for proof of which his amazed readers search his pages in vain. Dowker’s estimate is more moderate: he only bids us ‘assume the Straits are now one mile wider than when Caesar visited our shores’;[2523] but, like Professor Burrows, he requires us to make this assumption in the dark.
In M. Vivien de St.-Martin’s great work it is stated that Cape Grisnez ‘perd en moyenne 25 centim. par an; autrement dit, il recule 25 m. par siècle’.[2524] Assuming the accuracy of this statement, and assuming, further, that the rate of erosion has been constant since the invasion of Caesar, Cape Grisnez then projected seaward 489 metres, or about 534 yards further than it does now. I take for granted that the statement is based upon exact and prolonged observation; but when did that observation begin?[2525]
As for the South Foreland, it is certain that, as Dowker says,[2526] it is (or at all events was in 1885 and for some years previously) ‘being gradually undermined by the sea’; but it would be a great mistake to leap to the conclusion that this erosion has been going on continuously since the time of Caesar. In 1850 Captain K. B. Martin, who was harbour-master of Ramsgate, affirmed that the cliff between Dover and the South Foreland, being protected by ‘an inclined plane of shingle’ from the sea, had ‘preserved its contour from time immemorial’.[2527] The phrase is somewhat vague: but the captain was a careful observer; and we may believe him when he tells us that since his boyhood, fifty years before the time when he wrote, there had been no change.[2528] Why, then, were the Dover cliffs and the South Foreland being gradually eaten away in 1876, when Dowker wrote, and in 1884? Simply because the supply of shingle had, from various causes, been cut off.[2529] The erosion, said Mr. E. R. N. Druce, Engineer to the Government pier at Dover, takes place ‘at no particular rate, but falls of cliff at the points above named have taken place at intervals for some years past ... since they have lost the protection of the shingle at their base’. He added that the loss was ‘confined to areas bare of shingle’, and that, so far as he could ascertain, there existed no ‘data for determining the rate of erosion from early maps or other documents’.[2530] It would appear, then, that Professor Burrows’s assertion is based upon pure imagination.
When the subsidence which had taken place in the Neolithic Age was virtually complete the sea was bordered by a narrow plain, to which the high ground descended gradually. Erosion was at first rapid while the waters were devouring loose talus; but when beaches had had time to form it was of course retarded.[2531] How slow it is where the rocks are hard is proved by the fact that the contour of a prehistoric camp near Hastings shows that the seaward defence was formed not by an artificial rampart but by the East Cliff.[2532] Yet Professor Burrows asks us to believe that erosion has been as rapid in the chalk of the South Foreland as in the soft cliffs between Flamborough Head and the Thames.[2533] Generally speaking, as erosion proceeds, cliffs become higher;[2534] and it is obvious that if the Channel had been two miles wider in Caesar’s time, the Dover cliffs, if they had existed, would have been insignificant. But since Caesar described them as ‘precipitous heights’,[2535] and Cicero as ‘astonishing masses of cliff’,[2536] they were evidently little lower then than now. Let the reader ponder these things, and he will realize how monstrously exaggerated is the estimate which assigns to the Straits of Caesar’s time a breadth two miles less than our modern maps show.[2537]
V. DOVER HARBOUR
That a natural harbour existed at Dover in the time of Caesar is beyond dispute. It is mentioned under the name of Portus Dubris in the Itinerary of Antonine;[2538] and it was connected by a Roman road with Canterbury and London, and also with Richborough. Napoleon the Third[2539] affirms that it was entirely choked up about 950 A.D.; but this is a blunder, for the harbour is mentioned in Domesday Book.[2540] Even as late as 1582 it was stated by an engineer, named Thomas Digges, that ‘Before the peere was builte out, there are men alyue can remember that was no banckes or shelues of beache to be seene before Douer,[2541] but all cleane sea betwene Arteclif [Archcliff] tower and the castle clyffe’.[2542] Captain Martin[2543] holds that the remains of anchors which have been dug up out of meadows in the valley prove that the estuary was navigable as far as Crabble;[2544] and he believes that it actually extended to Water’s End,[2545] and covered the sites of the villages of Charlton and Buckland. Canon Puckle, however, argues that ‘the primitive haven’ covered a space which extended barely a quarter of a mile inland, ‘bounded by the lower half of St. James’ Street, Dolphin Lane, and Russell Street, and the east end of Dolphin Lane,’[2546] and he states that when this area was ‘partly uncovered in excavating for the new Russell Street gas works, quays and hawser-rings were brought to light’. Captain Martin’s estimate, which is based upon very uncertain data, must be regarded as an exaggeration: the estuary may possibly have extended up to Crabble, but was certainly not navigable so far except perhaps by coracles. Many years ago the remains of a Roman bath were discovered on the site of St. Mary’s church,[2547] and in 1887 a statue belonging to the period of the Roman occupation was found ‘during excavations for the foundation of the Carlton Club, in the Market Place’.[2548] These discoveries help to define approximately the western limit of the harbour; and I believe that Planche 17 of the Atlas accompanying Napoleon’s Histoire de Jules César[2549] represents it with tolerable accuracy.
