34 THE GREAT LEVEL OF THE FENS. PART I. 



districts, who derived a precarious subsistence from 

 fowling and fishing. They were described by writers 

 of the time as "a rude and almost barbarous sort of 

 lazy and beggarly people." Disease always hung over 

 the district, ready to pounce upon the half-starved fen- 

 men. Camden spoke of the country between Lincoln 

 and Cambridge as "a vast morass, inhabited by fen- 

 men, a kind of people, according to the nature of the 

 place where they dwell, who, walking high upon stilts, 

 apply their minds to grazing, fishing, or fowling." The 

 proverb of "Cambridgeshire camels" doubtless origi- 

 nated in this old practice of stilt-walking in the Fens; 

 the fenmen, like the inhabitants of the Landes, mount- 

 ing upon high stilts to spy out their flocks across the 

 dead level. But the flocks of the fenmen consisted 

 principally of geese, which were called the " fenmen' s 

 treasure;" the fenman's dowry being "three-score geese 

 and a pelt," or sheep-skin used as an outer garment. 

 The geese throve where nothing else could exist, being 

 equally proof against rheumatism and ague, though 

 lodging with the natives in their sleeping-places. Even 

 of this poor property, however, the slodgers were liable 

 at any time to be stripped by sudden inundations. 



In the oldest reclaimed district of Holland, containing 

 many old village churches, the inhabitants, in wet 

 seasons, were under the necessity of rowing to church 

 in their boats. In the other less reclaimed parts of 

 the Fens the inhabitants were much worse off. "In 

 the winter time," said Dugdale, "when the ice is only 

 strong enough to hinder the passage of boats, and 

 yet not able to bear a man, the inhabitants upon the 

 hards and banks within the Fens can have no help of 

 food, nor comfort for body or soul; no woman aid in 

 her travail, no means to baptize a child or partake of 

 the Communion, nor supply of any necessity saving 

 what these poor desolate places do afford. And what 

 expectation of health can there be to the bodies of men, 



