Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 11.djvu/665

Rh HELIGOLAND 631 Sea, 54 11 34&quot; N. lat., T 51 E. long., 36 miles from Cuxhaven at the mouth of the Elbe, and about 100 from Hamburg. Though the red cliffs of the Rock Island are most familiar to the voyager entering the Elbe, there are in reality two islets, the second being the Dune or Sand Island, now lying a quarter of a mile east of the main one, though at one time connected with it by de wxal, a neck of land which the sea broke through and destroyed in 1720. The Rock Island is nearly triangular in shape, surrounded on every side by steep cliffs, the only beach being the sandy spit where the landing-place is situated, near the south-east point. On this islet there are some 500 houses, divided into a lower town or Unterland, on the spit, and an upper town or Overland, situated on the cliff above and connected with the lower town by a wooden stair of 190 steps, the only possible mode of communication between the two sections. The portion of the flat-topped rock not occupied by the housss, the church with graveyard, the Government resi dencies, and place for a battery, comprises a little pasture- land, a few cabbage gardens, potato patches, and a powder magazine at the north end of the rock. About 200 sheep, tethered to particular spots, feed on the scanty herbage, eked out by potato-peelings and halms, cabbage blades, or any other vegetable refuse, which is carried out to them every morning. From one end of the island to the other runs a footpath, called by the Heligolanders the &quot; Lancl- wae &quot; or High Road, but better known to visitors by the name of &quot; Kartoffel-Allee &quot; (Potato Walk). There is also a lighthouse ; but, though a few guns are placed behind a rudo earthwork, thera are no fortifications except the inaccessible cliffs of the island, and no garrison of any kind unless a few coast-guardsmen be considered as such. The greatest length of the island, which slopes somewhat from west to east, is 5880 feet, and the greatest breadth 18 io feet, its circumference 13,500 feet, its average height 193 feet, and the highest point 216 feet. The Dune or Sand Island is little more than a sand-bank covered with scanty herbage, and imperfectly bound together by bent, grass, and carices. It is only about 200 feet above the sea at its highest point, but the drifting sands and the constant inroads of the sea make the height rather variable. The sea-bathing establishment is situated here ; but, with the exception of the restaurant keeper and waiters, and the attendants who drag the bathing-coaches into the sea, there are no residents. A shelving beach of white sand pre sents excellent facilities for bathing ; everything is under strict Government surveillance, the boats in which the bathers cross in the morning, the hours of bathing, and the tariff being all regulated by law. Approached from the saa the Rock Island, with its red-tiled houses perched in a little cluster on the red cliff, &quot; Am Falm,&quot; as it . is Called, looks very picturesque, and even the narrow brick-paved or sandy lanes of the town are not deficient in a certain degree of quaintness. There are with the exception of a wheelbarrow and an occasional peram bulatorno wheeled carriages in the island, and no horses or other beasts of burden. Even the two cows kept in the Unterland for tho use of invalid visitors, and whose milk is sold at the apothecary s shop, are removed at the end of the bathing season to Cuxhaven, the island not supplying food for both man and beast. Mud is unknown on the streets, the rain only serving to wash their sloping surfaces clean as the scoured floor of the housewives kitchens. Most of the houses arc built the lower half at least of brick, but some are of wood. There are a theatre, a &quot; conversation house,&quot; and a number of hotels and restaurants, though during the season nearly every house is more or less let out to &quot; baadegaster &quot; visitors for ssa-bathing forming the great source of the islanders prosperity. In both the lower and the upper town there are numbers of shops ; but the articles for sale seem to be chiefly intended for the summer &quot; bathing guests/ the natives getting most of their supplies from Hamburg or Bremen. The dwellings of the fisher-folk are reasonably clean, and the interiors bear evidence of the sea faring character of the population. Some of the houses have little gardens with flowers, cucumbers, &c., in front of them; and in places protected from the sea breezes there are a few fruit trees. At the foot of &quot; the stair &quot; are one or two lime trees sheltered by the contiguous houses; they are looked upon by the Heligolanders as objects of national pride. During the summer from 2000 to 3000 people visit the island for sea-bathing. Most of these are from Hamburg, English or other &quot;guests&quot; being rare. There are no English residents, the officials, the governor excepted, being either natives or Germans; and German, when Frisian is not em ployed, is the official language, though for form s sake on the postage stamps English and German words appear in duplicate. The natives speak a dialect of Frisian, barely intelligible to the other islands of the group. They are perfectly content with the almost perfect autonomy they enjoy under the English Government. There is little emi gration, and accordingly the population is slowly increasing. In 1879 the number was a little over 2000. There is regular communication with Bremen and Hamburg in the summer and autumn months, but during the winter the island is often isolated for weeks at a time, owing to tempestuous weather, drift ice, and other causes. It is said that insanity and suicide are in consequence not rare. Epidemic diseases occur, though they do not commonly spread ; but scrofula, owing to the poor character of the islanders food, attacks three-fourths of the population. In ten years there were 309 deaths about 15 to the 1000 ; while during the same period from 1863 to 1872 inclusive there were no less than 17 suicides. At one time the population did not exceed 300, and it was only when it increased to over 1000 that the inhabitants had to dispense with the few horses they kept to till their patches of land. This is now done with the spade, and loads are conveyed either in wheel barrows or in shallow willow baskets. The temperature of the Obeiiand is, owing to its exposure, about 1 5 lower than that of the Unterland. The following are the means of the months, from a series of observations taken for seven consecutive years at the lighthouse built on the highest point of the island : January, 31 9 Fahr. ; February, 33 9; March, 35 2; April, 43-1; May, 48 -9; June, 57 5; July, 62 &quot;2; August, 61 0; September, 58 4; October, 48 2; November, 40 0; December, 34 3 the mean temperature of the whole year being 47 2 Fahr. 1 The winters are however very stormy, and the air is so laden with salt spray that the rain leaves a delicate deposit of salt after it has evapo rated. May and the early part of June are very wet and foggy, so that the first visitors do not arrive until the middle of the latter month. The rooks composing the island are of Triassic age, buntir-sand- stone, keuper, lias, oolite, muschelkalk, and chalk (now denuded), topped by Pliocene &quot;the brown tock,&quot; in which are found the scales and teeth mostly of freshwater fishes, freshwater Molhisca, and fruit and leaves of a Carpinus, a Qucrcus, an Abuts, a maple, a plant allied to a hoya (Stomatophyllum liclgolandicuin), &c. . The cliffs are worn into caves, and around the Rock Island are many fantastic arches an(l_ columns of rock. There is no just ground, however, for believing that the Rock Island was ever much bigger than it is, the tales of the great size of Heligoland its numerous churches and villages in early times being doubtless exaggerated by tradition, while the maps affecting to show its former extension doubtless relate to the Sand Island, which was incontestably much larger in very recent periods, and is now yearly becoming smaller. The natural history presents nothing remarkable. There are no wild animals on it, and the numerous birds which, breed in its cliffs, or light on it during their migrations, all belong to the main- lanr 1 or to the North Sea&quot; s Hallier has enumerated 220 flowering 1 Zimmermann, Die sanitaren Zustiinde Ilelgolands, mit specieller Ber Acksichtigung dcs Ozongehaltes der Luft, 1873, pp. 12, 13. 2 Giitke, Edinburgh Nf.w Philosophical Journal, n. a., ix., p. 333; Blasius, &quot; Naumamiia,&quot; 1858, p. 303 (Ibis, 1862, p. 58); Cordeaux, Ibis, 1875, p. 1872. Mr Giitke, the island secretary, is preparing a special work on Heligoland ornithology.