290 THE WILD-FOWLER. 



the latter, fifteen feet in girth and sixteen yards in length ; many of 

 them burnt at the roots, thus indicating the ancient method of falling 

 timber which is adopted by uncivilized nations. Others appeared to 

 have been rooted up by the force of the current rushing upon 

 them. 



Many years after these encroachments of the sea, and when a thick 

 alluvial deposit had been extensively spread over the level, the 

 Romans, with indefatigable perseverance which has never been 

 equalled by the people of any other nation (except those of the 

 Netherlands), raised an embankment, and thereby regained many 

 thousand acres of land which the inundations of the sea had converted 

 from forest into fen. 



Pennant remarks that it was the complaint of Galgacus that the 

 Romans exhausted the strength of the Britons " in sylvis et paludibus 

 emunendis."* 



There are abundant evidences of these facts ; and among them 

 Roman tumuli, coins, and other relics, which were found in the im- 

 mediate neighbourhood of the level. 



It appears that the laborious exertions of the Romans were not im- 

 mediately inherited by the Britons, for when that industrious people 

 deserted our island, the drains and embankments which they had 

 made were neglected ; and in process of time the sea again burst 

 over them, when the level became a region of fens, lakes, and 

 swamps ; and so continued through many centuries : offering by far 

 the most extensive and favoured haunts for wild-fowl of any in 

 the kingdom ; so that thousands of water-fowl thronged the district 

 of the level at all seasons of the year. 



After the inundations of the sea and embankment by the Romans, 

 the Great Bedford Level contained upwards of 300,000 acres of fen- 

 land, f In addition to which it was bounded by other extensive dis- 

 tricts of fens, extending into the respective counties of Lincoln, Nor- 

 folk, Suffolk, Cambridge, Huntingdon, Northampton, and the Isle 

 of Ely. 



There were eight principal rivers formed by nature}: for conveying 

 to sea the waters of this extensive waste; these were the main 

 arteries of the fens, and most of them originally united by connecting 

 or tributary veins or streams ; forming themselves at different situa- 



* Pennant's Arctic Zoology. 



t Well's History of the Drainage of the Fens : 1830. 



t rm, P . 6. 



