THE SWAMPS OF MONTOIR 21 



" The swampy levels of Montoir form the natural vestibule to the 

 Armorican Peninsula, which of all the French provinces has the 

 longest and the most vigorously withstood the advance of civiliza- 

 tion, its ideas, and its modern institutions, and has the most rigidly 

 preserved its primitive character. There are many nooks and cor- 

 ners in Brittany scarcely changed in outward aspect or inner life 

 since the remote days when it was a valued appanage of the English 

 crown. They seem to have been plunged in a sleep of centuries, 

 from which the shrill whistle of the steam-engine is only just awaken- 

 ing them. The country is undulating and broken] in the central 

 districts it assumes quite a mountainous character. It is true that 

 its heights are only of moderate elevation, the loftiest not exceeding 

 2,000 feet ; but they are barren, rude, and sombre in appearance. 

 The coast is picturesque enough to delight the most zealous artist, 

 bordered with high and abrupt cliffs, and lined, as it were, with a 

 beach where the waters of the Channel ever break in floods of spray 

 and foam, and where masses of rock lie scattered of immense size 

 and the most fantastic forms." 



The counterpart to this we find in the English fen country, 

 which extends inland, around an arm of the North Sea called the 

 Wash, into the six counties of Cambridge, Huntingdon, 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 1 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 



