290 On the Agricultural Improvements of Lincolnshire. 
fullest description of a system, however, would not enable a 
farmer to follow that system, which he must see before he can 
imitate, and as my own experience had led me to the opinion 
expressed by Sir Robert Peel at the Lichfield meeting, that the 
young farmer, like the German craftsman, should enlarge his 
views by travelling in well-farmed districts, I will shortly state 
what are the objects of agricultural interest which Lincolnshire 
presents to such a visitor, attempting also to trace the history of 
its former and its recent improvements. 
This great countv is marked by the two ranges of hill, the 
heath and the wold, stretching side by side from south to north, 
separated by a wide level plain, which widens southwards into a 
district of fen containing about 350,000 acres, and forming part of 
the great morass that extended formerly, for 70 miles, from Cam- 
bridge to Lincoln, and was inhabited, as Camden tells us, in Eliza- 
beth's time, by fenmen, — " a kind of j)eople, according to the 
nature of the place where they dwell, who, walking high upon 
stilts, apply their minds to grazing, fishing, or fowling. The 
whole region," he adds, " in the winter, and sometimes most 
parts of the year, is overflowed by the rivers ; but again, when 
their streams are retired, it is so plenteous of a certain fat grass 
and full hay, which they call ' Lid,' that when they have mowen 
down as much of the better as will serve their turns, they set fire 
on the rest in November, at which time a man may see this fenny 
and moist tract on a light, flaming fire all over everywhere, and 
wonder thereat." Soon after the \vriting of this account, great 
efforts were made, amid much opposition from the fenmen, to 
redeem the Lincolnshire fens by cutting new courses for the 
rivers, and digging main-drains (or canals rather they should be 
called for their width), such as the North and South Forty- 
foot; but though the body of stagnant water was greatly reduced, 
still it was not subdued, so that the fen-land was worth little even 
when George IIL came to the throne: I mean the true fen-land 
in the interior : the ground rises towards the sea, which has 
thrown down upon it an excellent soil of fine sand and mud. 
Then, however, as the main water-courses, after the labour of two 
centuries, were still insufficient for delivering the waters into the 
sea, different districts began to seek their own remedy by sur- 
rounding themselves with embankments, which excluded the rising 
floods ; while the rain which fell within these embankments, or 
down-fall water as it is called, was pumped up by windmills into 
these chief rivers and cuts. 
Mr. Young's Report, which was made soon afterwards, in 1799, 
gives us some insight into the former as well as into the improved 
state of the fens thus embanked. "In that long reach of fen, ' he 
says, " which extends from Tattershall to Lincoln, a great improve- 
