CHAPTER XX. 

 WICKEN FEN. 



WHO has not at some time or other turned his thoughts towards 

 the Fens ? Who has not felt himself impelled to explore their historical 

 and still interesting fastnesses, the refuge once of Hereward and the last 

 of the Saxons ; the refuge, in later days, of a different, but perhaps to 

 the naturalist a not less attractive, race of beings the Bittern, the Black 

 Tern, the Black-tailed Godwit, and the Ruff? 



It was not, however, with any hope of meeting with either of these 

 rarities which, if they then visited the place at all, did so only as stragglers 

 on migration that, on a glorious morning at the end of May, I set out 

 from Cambridge, in company with three other kindred spirits, to see 

 what bird-life could still be met with in this once famous district. I 

 had often been sold before ; often plodded gaily along to some place marked 

 on the map as Fen "So-and-so," and as often returned worn out and 

 disgusted, and inclined only to curse the march of civilization with all 

 its hideous paraphernalia of dykes and causeways. I had reached my goal, 

 and found it not, as I had fondly anticipated, a mass of sedge and water, 

 but perhaps an ordinary green meadow sparsely sprinkled with a few 

 decayed willows, or, worse still, an every-day sort of cornfield, differing 

 little from its fellows, except that the soil was darker and heavier to walk 

 upon. 



On this occasion, however, there was no fear of disappointment. We were 

 going to Wicken Fen, and had learnt from one who had visited the locality 

 in person that we should at last see a genuine piece of fenland, undefiled 

 by either railroad or ploughshare, and probably much the same as it had 

 been a couple of centuries ago. We trained to Waterbeach, and intended 

 to drive thence to the Fen. The route was easy to follow, as it led along the 

 river all the way, but the only conveyance obtainable was a seedy-looking 

 dogcart, drawn by a horse named, presumably in derision, " Wildfire " 

 a quadruped which looked as if, on a good road and pursued by wolves, it 

 might perhaps have managed six miles an hour and died after it. The road 



