234 HENRY HILL GOODELL 



Carolinas. It was a labyrinth of black, wandering streams; 

 broad lagoons, morasses submerged every spring-tide; 

 vast beds of reed and sedge and fern; vast copses of willow, 

 alder, and gray poplar, rooted in the floating peat, which 

 was swallowing up slowly, all-devouring, yet all-preserving, 

 the forests of fir and oak, ash and poplar, hazel and yew, 

 which had once grown in that low, rank soil. Trees torn 

 down by flood and storm floated and lodged in rafts, dam- 

 ming the waters back upon the land. Streams bewildered 

 in the forests changed their channels, mingling silt and sand 

 with the black soil of the peat. Nature left to herself ran 

 into wild riot and chaos more and more, till the whole 

 fen became one dismal swamp. 



Four or five centuries later William of Malmesbury visits 

 the place and leaves us this charming picture of the change : * 

 "It is a counterfeit of Paradise, where the gentleness and 

 purity of heaven appear already to be reflected. In the 

 midst of the fens rise groves of trees which seem to touch 

 the stars with their tall and slender tops; the charmed eye 

 wanders over a sea of verdant herbage, the foot which 

 treads the wide meadow meets with no obstacle in its 

 path. Not an inch of land as far as the eye can reach lies 

 uncultivated. Here the soil is hidden by fruit trees; there 

 by vines stretched upon the ground or trailed on trellises. 

 Nature and art rival each other, the one supplying all that 

 the other forgets to produce. O deep and pleasant solitude ! 

 Thou hast been given by God to the monks, so that their 

 mortal life may daily bring them nearer to heaven." 



Everywhere we see the monks instructing the population 

 in the most profitable methods and industries, naturalizing 

 1 Chronicle of William of Malmesbury. 



