The Wash. 577 



fertile when well drained. In Suffolk and Essex the 

 chalky Boulder-clay covers wide tracts of flat land, 

 and was formerly much used as a dressing for other soils, 

 and it forms an excellent soil in itself. 



The great plain of the Wash consists partly of peat 

 on the west and south, but chiefly of silt. These 

 broad flats, about seventy miles in length from north to 

 south, and forty in width, include an area of more than 

 1,700 square miles. The whole country is traversed by 

 well-dyked rivers, canals, drains, and trenches. Stand- 

 ing on the margin of the flat, or walking on the long 

 straight roads or dykes, cheerfulness is not the pre- 

 vailing impression made on the mind. The ground 

 looks as level as the sea in a calm, broken only by 

 occasional dreary poplars and willows, and farm houses 

 impressive in their loneliness. The soil of these fens ere 

 the crops grow, is often as black as a raven, the ditches 

 are sluggish and dismal, and the whole effect is sug- 

 gestive of ague. Windmills of moderate size stand out 

 from the level as conspicuous objects, and here and 

 there the sky-line is pierced by the ruins of Crow- 

 land Abbey, Boston tower, and the massive piles of the 

 Cathedrals of Ely and Peterborough on the margins of 

 the flat. Yet it is not without charms of a kind ; as, 

 when at sunset, sluice, and windmill, and tufted willows, 

 combined with light clouds dashed with purple and gold, 

 compose a landscape such as elsewhere in Western Europe 

 may be seen in the flats of Holland. The same impres- 

 sion, in less degree, is made on the banks of the Humber, 

 where the broad warped meadows, won from the sea by 

 nature and art, lie many feet below the tide at flood, 

 for walking in the fields behind the dykes, when the 

 tide is up, good-sized vessels may be seen sailing on the 

 rivers above the level of the spectator's head. An old 



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