X XX I The Face of the Wilderness 



WINTER floods restore landscapes of a wilder past. 

 As soon as the soil is saturated to overflowing by 

 the unusual rain, the effects of generations of careful 

 drainage are for the time annulled, and the ancient 

 hydrographical system of the country is restored 

 before our curious eyes. The rivers overs tride 

 their straitened banks ; and they fill once more 

 with a turbid winter torrent the " fleets " and 

 " oxbows " and stagnant backwaters which once 

 served annually as short cuts and emergency 

 channels for their swollen waters, but in days of 

 swifter drainage have lost their use. As soon as 

 the flood water begins to stand or flow, a thousand 

 inequalities are revealed upon the surface of the 

 land, which wholly escaped notice in drier years. 

 Streams flow again down gentle dimples in the 

 pastures, where only the longer and ranker tussocks 

 of the grass, or the misty film that clung in the 

 autumn evenings, gave a hint of an underground 

 channel. Swamps long reclaimed and tilled, but 

 still, perhaps, bearing witness of their old condition 

 by their traditional names of " marsh," " moor," 

 or " mere," once more betray themselves to the 

 hilltop gaze, where the straight lines of fence and 

 hedge cut with a heightened artificiality across 



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