42 THE DISTKICT OF THE FENS. 



Lincoln, Norfolk, Northampton, and Suffolk, with an area of upwards 

 of 420,000 acres. Inland it is bounded by an amphitheatral barrier 

 of high lands, and touches the towns of Bolingbroke, Brandon, Earith, 

 Milton, and Peterborough. Into this great basin flow the waters of 

 the greater part of the drainage of nine counties, which gather into 

 the rivers Cam, Glen, Lark, Nene, Great and Little Ouse, Stoke, and 

 Welland, these being linked together by a network of natural and 

 artificial canals. 



Anciently, the Fens were pleasant to the eye of the lover of 

 the picturesque ; for they contained shining meres and golden reed- 

 beds, haunted by countless water-fowl, and strange, gaudy insects. 

 " Dark-green alders," says Kingsley, * " and pale-green reeds 

 stretched for miles round the broad lagoon, where the coot clanked 

 and the bittern boomed, and the sedge-bird, not content with its own 

 sweet song, mocked the notes of all the birds around ; while high 

 overhead hung hawk beyond hawk, buzzard beyond buzzard, kite 

 beyond kite, as far as eye could see." What strange transformations 

 must this wild region have undergone ! There was a time, in all 

 probability, when a great part of the German Ocean was dry land, 

 through which, into a vast estuary between North Britain and 

 Norway, flowed together all the rivers of North-eastern Europe 

 Elbe, Weser, Rhine, Scheldt, Seine, Thames, and all the rivers of east 

 England, as far north as the Humber. Meanwhile, the valleys of the 

 Cam, the Ouse, the Nene, the Welland, the Glen, and the Witham, were 

 slowly "sawing themselves out" by the quiet action of rain and 

 rivers. Then came an age when the lowland was swept away by the 

 biting, corroding sea-wash still so powerfully destructive on the east 

 coast of England, as far as Flamborough Head. " Wave and tide by 

 sea, rain and river by land ; these are God's mighty mills in which 

 he makes the old world new. And as Longfellow says of moral 

 things, so may we of physical, 



" ' Though the mills of God grind slowly, yet they grind exceeding small ; 

 Though he sit and wait with patience, with exactness grinds he all.'" 



* Rev. 0. Kingsley, in Good Words, vol. for 1867, pp. 302-310. 



