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It happened on the 1 6th of December, when 
there fell fuch a deluge of rain, over all the North 
of England, as has not been known, for at leaf!: 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 impaflable, even in fummer, to a foot paflenger. 
It was moflly of the quag kind, which is a fort of 
mofs covered at top with a turf of heath and coarfe 
aquatic grades j but fo foft and watery below, that, 
if a pole is once thrufl: through the turf, it can eafily 
be pufhed, though perhaps 1 5 or 20 feet long, to the 
bottom. If a perfon ventures on one of thele quags, 
it bends in waves under his feet j and if the furface 
breaks, he is in danger of finking 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 betweenitand the river Efk.SeeTab. VI. 
About the middle of the flow, at the place marked A, 
were the deepefl: 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 
mod places, it was hardly fafe for any thing heavier than a 
fportsman to venture upon it, even in the dried 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. ■ 
7 . though 
