44 GREAT SCHEMES OF DRAINAGE. 



Oowland and Ely, and of the thriving towns, the good work of 

 drainage went on slowly ; but elsewhere the land was given up to 

 the bittern and the heron. 



No comprehensive scheme was adopted, however, until Russei, 

 Earl of Bedford, cut the great Bedford River, twenty-one miles long, 

 and rescued from the desert the rich tract known by his name the 

 Bedford Level. 



' Erst 



A dreary pathless waste, the coughing flock 

 Was wont with hairy fleeces to deform ; 

 And, smiling with its lure of summer flowers, 

 The heavy ox, vain struggling, to ingulf; 

 Till one, of that high-honoured patriot name, 

 Eussel, arose, who drained the rushy fen, 

 Confined the waves, bade groves and gardens bloom, 

 And through his new creation led the Ouse 

 And gentle Camus, silver-winding streams."* 



The work was continued by William Earl of Bedford, who added, 

 in 1649, to his father's old " Bedford River " that noble parallel river 

 the Hundred Foot, -both rising high above the land to allow for flood 

 water. It was carried on at a later period under the direction of 

 Government surveyors. Then came Rennie, the great engineer, 

 whose operations effectually shut out the desert, and handed over to 

 the agriculturist nearly the whole level of the Fens, some seventy 

 miles in length. Works are now in progress for rescuing a further 

 portion of the basin of the Wash, to be formed into a new county, 

 and named after the Queen. So that now, in tracts once covered by 

 the sea, or knee-deep in reedy, slushy, pestilential slime, the grass 

 grows luxuriantly, the crops wave in golden abundance, or the breeze 

 takes up and carries afar 



" The livelong bleat 

 Of the thick-fleeced sheep from wattled folds." 



But the dominion of labour has not yet been established over the 

 whole Fen-district. There are still dreary nooks, and gloomy corners, 

 and unproductive wastes ; wild scenes there are, which few English- 

 * Dyer, " Poetical Works," The Fleece, Look ii. 



