the Ullah Bund in Cutch, during the period when the sediment of the Rhine was converting a part of the sea into land, or they may have constituted islands previously.
When the river divides north of Cleves, the left arm takes the name of the Waal; and the right, retaining that of the Rhine, is connected, a little farther to the north, by an artificial canal with the river Yssel. The Rhine then flowing westward divides again southeast of Utrecht, and from this point it takes the name of the Leck, a name which was given to distinguish it from the northern arm called the old Rhine, which was sanded up until the year 1825, when a channel was cut for it, by which it now enters the sea at Catwyck. It is common, in all great deltas, that the principal channels of discharge should shift from time to time, but in Holland so many magnificent canals have been constructed, and have so diverted, from time to time, the course of the waters, that the geographical changes in this delta are endless, and their history, since the Roman era, forms a complicated topic of antiquarian research. The present head of the delta is about forty geographical miles from the nearest part of the gulf called the Zuyder Zee, and more than twice that distance from the general coast-line. The present head of the delta of the Nile is about 80 or 90 geographical miles from the sea; that of the Ganges, as before stated, 220; and that of the Mississippi about 180, reckoning from the point where the Atchafalaya branches off to the extremity of the new tongue of land in the Gulf of Mexico. But the comparative distance between the heads of deltas and the sea affords no positive data for estimating the relative magnitude of the alluvial tracts formed by their respective rivers, for the ramifications depend on many varying and temporary circumstances, and the area over which they extend does not hold any constant proportion to the volume of water in the river.
The Rhine therefore has at present three mouths. About two-thirds of its waters flow to the sea by the Waal, and the remainder is carried partly to the Zuyder Zee by the Yssel, and partly to the ocean by the Leck. As the whole coast to the south as far as Ostend, and on the north to the entrance of the Baltic, has, with few exceptions, from time immemorial, yielded to the force of the waves, it is evident that the common delta of the Rhine, Meuse, and Scheldt, for these three rivers may all be considered as discharging their waters into the same part of the sea, would, if its advance had not been checked, have become extremely prominent; and even if it had remained stationary, would long ere this have projected far beyond the rounded outline of the coast, like that strip of land already described at the mouth of the Mississippi. But we find, on the contrary, that the islands which skirt the coast have not only lessened in size, but in number also, while great bays have been formed in the interior by incursions of the sea.