1829.] Three Years at Cambridge. 469 
bow were not in itself sufficient, I had the additional consolation of dis- 
covering that my eye-tooth on the left hand side was missing. In the 
hurry of business during the preceding night, it had been loosened, dis- 
lodged, and bolted ! 
In this state of mind and body I was found by Mr. G——, 
the horse-dealer, who abruptly entered my room with a bill of 
ominous longitude in his hand. His face was awfully ugly ; the features 
grim and satanic—the expression—but what beauty can you expect from 
a creditor? Venus herself would look a fright if she came to ask for 
money! Scarcely had I got rid of this unreasonable being, which I did 
with the greatest difficulty, when P. t burst in upon my solitude. 
His demeanour, like his predecessor’s, was thoughtful, for not a bone in 
his skin—and he abounded in that article—had been left unvisited by 
the mobility. His memory, too, was unusually vivid; and as few, if 
any, of my numerous scrapes during the last year and a half had escaped 
him, he now indulged me with a copious catalogue of them, concluding 
his “reminiscences” with a florid description of my black eye, the justice 
of which was a strong provocative to suicide. So passed the first truly 
miserable day I had yet spent at Cambridge. 
It was about a month after this adventure, that I was invited to form one 
of a party who were on the eve of setting out on a journey to Whittelsea 
Mere. There is something so peculiar about the scenery of the Isle of Ely 
-fens—so desolate, so uniform, so truly oppressing to the imagination, that 
I may probably be excused if I here attempt a description of them. We left 
Cambridge about four o’clock in the evening, and after a toilsome, I may 
even add perilous, circumbendibus through cross-roads, rarely visited 
except by the enterprizing sportsman, arrived at a late hour at Ramsay. 
Here we halted for the night at a small public house, the best that the 
place afforded, and early on the following morning, after a breakfast 
that would have done honour to a beef-eater, prepared to continue our 
journey. What was our astonishment, on reaching the inn door, to find 
the streets nearly knee deep in water, and crowds of people paddling , 
their way through it, some in boats, some in coracles, and one or two on 
foot! On inquiring into the cause of this phenomenon, we were in- 
formed that, owing to the late rains, the neighbouring fenny lands had 
overflowed ; and, with a punctuality rather to be admired than imitated, 
had paid their usual periodical visit to Ramsay. Under these circum- 
stances we were obliged to hire a two-oared boat, in which we were 
rowed down to a barge which, according to previous orders, lay in 
waiting for us at the canal bridge. Our Palinurus was a dull amphibi- 
ous sort of biped, half bargeman, half coachman—who placed himself at 
the helm, and, by a peculiar movement of the cable, directed the motion 
of the horse who towed us slowly along. This mode of journeying, 
however efficient in countries like the Netherlands, where every conve- 
nience is provided for the traveller's accommodation, is any thing but 
i ry in England, where it is wholly out of character. For miles 
miles the Cambridge and Lincolnshire fens possess not the slightest 
iety. ‘There are no villages scattered along the borders of the canals 
no sylvan snatches of scenery—no detached cottages, where the busy 
inning wheel may be seen to ply—no luxuriant meadows, where at the 
ting season the hum of human industry may be heard, and the chirp 
the grasshopper, and the quick shrill carol of the blackbird may give 
ife and interest to the landscape—the whole is one deceitful desert flat, 
hing on to an apparently interminable distance on all sides. 
