FEN VERSUS MARSH. 441 



Ouse, Spelman says : — * All these parts often suffer loss from the 

 river overflowing the marshes, but yet the gain annually is not 

 small (from the fertilizing nature of the waters), besides the great 

 abundance of fish and other water creatures (as wildfowl that are 

 there attracted). This river is, as it were, the milky way to many 

 inland places, for by it they import and export largely merchan- 

 dise and the necessaries of life.* But this is as nothing to his 

 praises of Lynn, with his remarks on which earthly paradise I 

 must depart out of the Fens. ' Lynn,' says Spelman, ' is so well 

 provided by nature with esculents and drinks, that it may seem 

 to be the storehouse both of Ceres and Bacchus ; for on its 

 eastern side there is a great abundance of corn, eggs, Rabbits, 

 and land birds, while on the western side there is a like abun- 

 dance of cheese, butter, Oxen, Swans, and marsh birds ; and in 

 the neighbourhood of fish — on the one side sea-fish, and on the 

 other river and fresh-water fish ; so that scarcely in all Britain, 

 perhaps in all Europe, is so great an abundance of eatables to be 

 met with in like space.' " 



We will now cross the county, and visit the great alluvial 

 plain intersected by sluggish rivers, and studded with open sheets 

 of water known as " Broads," lying in the south-eastern corner, 

 and extending southward to Lowestoft, in Suffolk. The rivers 

 are the Bure, the Yare, and the Waveney, with their tributaries 

 flowing through valleys excavated in the glacial beds, the alluvial 

 deposit in which is of great depth, and the process of growing 

 up is still rapidly progressing, whilst the drier portions known 

 as mowing marshes year by year are becoming more solid. In 

 the north are the Horsey and Waxham marshes, further inland 

 the valley of the Bure has its miles of reed-rond and mowing 

 marsh; but the finest stretch of all is the great level plain, 

 affording in summer and early autumn pasturage for innumerable 

 cattle and sheep, through which the traveller by rail passes in 

 his journey from Reedham eastward to Yarmouth, or south-east 

 nearly to Lowestoft. I do not know the extent of the marshes 

 in the valley of the Waveney to which your correspondent, 

 Mr. Farman, refers, there must be many thousands of acres ; 

 but, confining my remarks to the county of Norfolk, this great 

 alluvial piain comprises some 14,000 acres. Again quoting from 

 the address before referred to : — 



