CHAPTER XX 



The Lake Village 



From the Abbey to the prehistoric Lake Village is but 

 a step of two miles, and here I spent agreeable hours 

 with Dr. Bulleid, the discoverer and excavator of this 

 little centre of British life of the dawn, turning over 

 his finds dug out of the black, peaty soil. Here is an 

 enthusiast if you like — there are some in the south ! — 

 a busy doctor who works every day of the year in his 

 practice, excepting when he takes an annual summer 

 holiday of a few weeks and spends every day of it, from 

 morn to dewy eve, at the excavations, studying every 

 spadeful of earth thrown up by his dozen diggers. 

 My chief interest was in the bones of the large water- 

 birds on which the lake-dweller subsisted, and the 

 weapons with which he slew them — the round, hard 

 clay balls which were hurled from slings. 



From the village I rambled on over the bed of the 

 ancient lake to its deeper part, which is still a wet 

 marsh, though partly drained and intersected with 

 hedges and dykes. Here there are large areas of boggy 

 ground so thickly grown over with cotton-grass that 

 at a little distance it looks like an earth covered with 

 snow. Straying in this place, revelling in that wind- 



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