The sand, moved by the caprice of the current, was constantly ruining the villages or raising them to peaks of unexpected prosperity.

Cities celebrated in history were to-day no more than streets of ruins at the foot of a hillock crowned with the remains of a Phoenician, Roman, Byzantine or Saracen castle, or with a fortress contemporary with the Crusades.

In other centuries these had been famous ports; before their walls had taken place naval battles; now from their ruined acropolis one could scarcely see the Mediterranean except as a light blue belt at the end of a low and marshy plain.

The accumulating sand had driven the sea back miles....

On the other hand, inland cities had come to be places of embarkation because of the continual perforation of the waves that were forcing their way in.
The wickedness of mankind had imitated the destructive work of nature.
When a maritime republic conquered a rival republic, the first thing that it thought of was to obstruct its harbor with sand and stones in order to divert the course of its waters so as to convert it into an inland city, thereby ruining its fleets and its traffic.