It appears that these people did not arrive here in one body, but successively, in the course of many years: they spread themselves over various parts of the coasts of the North Sea, and even a considerable way up the borders of the Weser and the Elbe; according to documents which I have mentioned in my _Lettres sur l’Histoire de la Terre et de l’Homme_. These new settlers found large _marsches_, formed, as well in the wide mouths of those rivers as along the coasts, and around the original islands of _geest_; especially that of Heiligeland, the most distant from the coast, and opposite the mouth of the Eyder. Of this island, which is steep towards the south, the original mass consists of strata of _sandstone_; and at that time its _marsch_ extended almost to Eyderstede: there were _marsches_ likewise around all the other original islands; besides very large islands of pure _marsch_ in the intervals of the former. All these lands were desert at the arrival of the Frisians; and the parts on which they established their first habitations, to take care of their breeds of horses and cattle feeding on the _marsches_, were the original eminences of the islands; on that of Heiligeland they built a temple to their great goddess Phoseta, or Fosta. When they became too numerous to confine themselves to the heights, their herds being also greatly multiplied, they ventured to begin inhabiting the _marsches_; but afterwards, some great inundations having shewn them the dangers of that situation, they adopted the practice followed by those who had settled on the _marsches_ of the province of Groningen, and still continued on the Halligs; that of raising artificial mounts called _werfs_, on which they built their houses, and whither they could, upon occasion, withdraw their herds; and it likewise appears, that, in the winter, they assembled in greater numbers on the spots originally the highest, in the islands, as well as on some parts of the coasts.