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It happened on the 16th of December, when 

 there fell fuch a deluge of rain, over all the North 

 of England, as has not been known, for at leaft two 

 hundred years. There was a very great flood at Moffat, 

 but I think, I have feen one or two greater, and cer- 

 tainly it was not fo extraordinary here, as further 

 South. 



The Solway flow contains 1300 acres of very 

 deep and tender mofs, which, before this accident,, 

 were impaffable, even in fummer, to a foot paffenger., 

 It was moftly of the quag kind, which is a fort of 

 mofs covered at top with a turf of heath and coarfe 

 aquatic graffes j but fo foft and watery below, that, 

 if a pole is once thruft through the turf, it can eafily 

 be pufhed, though perhaps 15 or 20 feet long, to the 

 bottom. If a perfon ventures on one of thefe quags, 

 it bends in waves under his feet ; and if the furface 

 breaks, he is in danger of linking to the bottom *,. 

 The furface of the flow was, at different places, 

 between 50 and 80 feet higher than the fine fertile 

 plain, that lay between it and the river Efk. See Tab. VI. 

 About the middle of the flow, at the place marked A, 

 were the deepen: quags, and there the mofs was ele- 

 vated higher above the plain, than in any part of the 

 neighbourhood. From this, to the farm called the 

 Gap, upon the plain at C, there was a broad gully,, 



* The furface was always fo much of a quagmire, that, in- 

 moll places, it was hardly fafe for any thing heavier than a 

 fportsman to venture upon it, even in the drieft fummers. A 

 great number of Scotchmen, in the army commanded by Oliver 

 Sinclair in the time of Henry VIII. loft their lives in it; and it 

 is faid that fome people digging peats upon it, met with the 

 fkeleton of a trooper and his horfe in compleat armour, not 

 many years ago, 



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