A PEACEFUL INVASION.

Thames Star, Volume IX, Issue 3021, 21 October 1878, Page 4

A PEACEFUL INVASION.

After watching the sanguinary struggle by which ■ Eastern Europe has been devastated, it is gratifying to turn to another mode of territorial aggrandisement now at length being fairly inaugurated by the Netherlanders. The gallant Dutchmen have matured their plan of campaign, we are told, have concentrated their forces, and are about to commence operations by which they hope to annex some seven or eight hundred square miles of land of surpassing fertility now lying at the bottom of the Zuyder Zee. It is now ten or twelve years since this project was first seriously entertained and a couple of years since the Netherlands Minister, at a public xdinner, expressed his opinion that something like sixteen years of uninterrupted labor would be required to consummate the work. Engines of 10,000 horse-power have been provided^ and if the great scheme should prove as successful as all the world would like to see it, it is to this comparatively modern power, that the success will have to be attributed. The Dutch have accomplished many. surprising feats in this branch of engineering before, but their greatest undertaking—the drainage of Haarlem was only a small affair compared with the work now actually starting. The old Dutch windmill was the best power they could summon to their pumps for that great work, and by means of this aboot seventy square miles were reclaimed, after just about the same lapse of time is iB now \ expected to drain 700. It is probably only by the exercise of a powerful imagination that travellers over this inland sea are able to discern the towns and villages which were overwhelmed when! in the twelfth or thirteenth century—authorities, we believe are not quite agreed which—Neptune broke his bounds and' poured in upon them; but the uncovering of this vast expanse of sea bottom will, no doubt, have some curious revelations for us, and there seems to be a good opportunity for another speculator like the one who was said to have paid a fabulous sum for the treasure that bad been dropped through the cracks in the floor of the Exhibition of 1851.—Weekly Eeview.