Advantages of Reclaiming the Sands

If we consider the quantity of waste land which has been made productive by the planting of the sand hills and plains, and the extent of fertile soil, the number of villages and other human improvements, and the value of the harbors, which the same process has saved from being buried under the rolling dunes, and at last swallowed up forever by the invasions of the sea, we shall be inclined to rank Brémontier and Reventlov among the greatest benefactors of their race. With the exception of the dikes of the Netherlands, their labors are the first deliberate and direct attempts of man to make himself, on a great scale, a geographical power, to restore natural balances which earlier generations had disturbed, and to atone, by acts guided by foreseeing and settled purpose, for the waste which thoughtless improvidence had created.