On the AffvicuUiiral Improvements of Lincolnshire. 293 
solid. Another tier of fag^jj^ots is then laid upon the first, and is 
again embodied with them by the warp. Thus the growing em- 
bankment at last rises above high-water level, and the VVclland, 
being now confined by its new banks, digs itself out a new 
channel through the yielding bottom. A fresh advance of faggots 
is then made, and a similar addition to the double embankment 
ensues. In this way has the engineer advanced Smiles into the 
sea, compelling the waves to cement the frail materials of their 
own subjugation, and by these means all the rivers of the Great 
Wash might be carried forward to a common outfall, so that the 
Jen district would acquire a perfect and natural di'ainage. Nor 
IS the benefit of these outfalls confined to drainage and naviga- 
tion, for when the new river-banks are completed they are con- 
nected with the shore by cross embankments, and the portions 
of sea thus cut off are gradually filled up by warp, and become 
excellent land. Before we leave the south fens of Lincolnshire, 
I must mention a great work about to be undertaken in the 
neighbouring county of Cambridge, a new main channel or river, 
passing for more than 30 miles upwards from Lynn, through the 
heart of the Bedford Level, to Whittlesea Meer, in Huntingdon- 
shire, one of the two only lakes which, as we learnt in our books 
of geography, belonged to the south of England. Ramsey Meer, 
its Cambridgeshire neighbour, has already disappeared, and fine 
crops of wheat are growing upon the bottom; and I rejoice to hear 
that, by means of Mr. Walker's new cut, Whittlesea Meer will 
shortly be likewise blotted out of our maps. 
Leaving now the south of Lincolnshire, we find that the great 
central valley, as it inclines towards the north also, soon becomes 
a fen district ; and we find too another great work of drainage — 
the new Ancholme River, cut towards the end of the last century, 
a wide canal running in a straight line for 20 miles to the 
H umber, laying dry 17,000 acres. Of this level Arthur Young 
says, " Before the draining it was worth but from Is. to 3.y. 6d., 
now it is from 10^'. to 30s." These redeemed meadows, or carrs, 
as they are called, I found to consist of an unctuous peat, which 
derives its richness from a mixture of sediment thrown down by 
the former floods while the peat was deposited. 
There is still one other lowland tract of which, having visited 
it in the summer, I wish to say a few words. It lies on the west 
of the western hills, partly in Yorkshire, the level of Hatfield 
Chase. When you ride across this vast plain, through endless 
corn-fields, with the distant uplands of Yorkshire and Lincoln- 
shire for its opposite boundaries, you see a single hill which, 
rearing itself midway from the dead flat between them, was for- 
merly an island, and is still named the Isle of Axholme. A great 
part of this fertile plain was once sea, as it would now be again if 
