222 THE BRITISH ISLES. 



residence of human beings. This is proved by the flint weapons and implements 

 which, together with fresh- water shells and the bones of oxen and mammoths, have 

 been discovered on the river terraces along the Ouse. 



The peat of the Fens in several places attains a thickness of lO feet. As in 

 the peat of the Netherlands, there arc embedded in it the remains of ancient 

 forests, the bones of wild boars, stags, and beavers, and more rarely weapons 

 and boats which belonged perhaps to the ancient Britons. It has been noticed that 

 the most elevMted peat yields oak, whilst that nearer the sea conceals only ancient 

 forests of fir.* In proportion as the soil subsides these buried trunks of trees 

 come to be nearer the surface, just as in Holland, and very frequently the plough- 

 share strikes against them. There are localities where the wood recovered from 

 the peat suffices for the construction of fences. 



The embankment and reclamation of these lowlands were begun more than 

 eighteen hundred years ago. An old embankment, traces of which are still visible 

 a few miles from the actual coast-line, connects all those towns which are known 

 to have been Roman stations. The Normans raised powerful dj'kes along the 

 river Welland for the protection of the adjoining flats, but the drainage works on a 

 really large scale date back no further than the seventeenth century, and were 

 carried out by a company formed by the Earl of Bedford. It is from this circum- 

 stance that a large portion of the Fen country is known as the Bedford Level. Later 

 on Dutchmen, taken prisoners in a naval battle fought in 1652, were employed in 

 the construction of canals and dykes, and the lessons then conveyed proved very 

 profitable. Not a decade has passed since without the extent of cultivable land 

 having teen increased at the expense of the sea. A line drawn through the ancient 

 towns of Wainfleet, Boston, Spalding, "Wisbeach, and King's Lynn approximately 

 marks the direction of the coast in the Middle Ages. The towns named have 

 travelled inland, as it were, ever since, and new dykes and embankments are for 

 ever encroaching upon the bay of the Wash. Propositions have even been made 

 for blotting out that indenture of the sea altogether. Natural obstacles would not 

 present such a work from being carried to a happy conclusion, for the "Wash is 

 encumbered with banks of sand and mud, which would assist such an embank- 

 ment. Many of the towns, villages, and homesteads whose names terminate 

 in " beach," " sea," " mere," or " ey," proving that formerly they were close to the 

 sea, and even on islands in the midst of it, now lie 5, 10, or even 30 miles 

 inland, and a few shallow meres are all that remain of an estuary which at 

 one time extended inland as far as the Cam, Huntingdon, Peterborough, and 

 Lincoln. 



The islands which rose in the midst of this estuary were formerly of great 

 historical importance, for they proved an asylum to the persecuted of every race. 

 Quaking bogs and marshes enabled Ditmarschers, Frieslanders, and Batavians to 

 maintain their independence for a considerable time ; and similarly the inhabitants 

 of the Fen country, too, repeatedly endeavoured to throw off the yoke of their 



* John Algernon Clarke, " On the Great Level of the Fens " {Journal of the Agricultural Society of 

 England, vol. viii.). 



