This, I Say, I Was Told--I Do Not Affirm It To Be
True; But When I Viewed The Country Round, I Confess I Could Not
But Incline To Believe It.
It is observable of these sheep that they are exceeding fruitful,
the ewes generally bringing two lambs, and they
Are for that reason
bought by all the farmers through the east part of England, who
come to Burford Fair in this country to buy them, and carry them
into Kent and Surrey eastward, and into Buckinghamshire and
Bedfordshire and Oxfordshire north; even our Banstead Downs in
Surrey, so famed for good mutton, is supplied from this place. The
grass or herbage of these downs is full of the sweetest and the
most aromatic plants, such as nourish the sheep to a strange
degree; and the sheep's dung, again, nourishes that herbage to a
strange degree; so that the valleys are rendered extremely fruitful
by the washing of the water in hasty showers from off these hills.
An eminent instance of this is seen at Amesbury, in Wiltshire, the
next county to this; for it is the same thing in proportion over
this whole county. I was told that at this town there was a meadow
on the bank of the River Avon, which runs thence to Salisbury,
which was let for 12 pounds a year per acre for the grass only.
This I inquired particularly after at the place, and was assured by
the inhabitants, as one man, that the fact was true, and was showed
the meadows. The grass which grew on them was such as grew to the
length of ten or twelve feet, rising up to a good height and then
taking root again, and was of so rich a nature as to answer very
well such an extravagant rent.
The reason they gave for this was the extraordinary richness of the
soil, made so, as above, by the falling or washing of the rains
from the hills adjacent, by which, though no other land thereabouts
had such a kind of grass, yet all other meadows and low grounds of
the valley were extremely rich in proportion.
There are abundance of good families, and of very ancient lines in
the neighbourhood of this town of Dorchester, as the Napiers, the
Courtneys, Strangeways, Seymours, Banks, Tregonells, Sydenhams, and
many others, some of which have very great estates in the county,
and in particular Colonel Strangeways, Napier, and Courtney. The
first of these is master of the famous swannery or nursery of
swans, the like of which, I believe, is not in Europe. I wonder
any man should pretend to travel over this country, and pass by it,
too, and then write his account and take no notice of it.
From Dorchester it is six miles to the seaside south, and the ocean
in view almost all the way. The first town you come to is
Weymouth, or Weymouth and Melcombe, two towns lying at the mouth of
a little rivulet which they call the Wey, but scarce claims the
name of a river. However, the entrance makes a very good though
small harbour, and they are joined by a wooden bridge; so that
nothing but the harbour parts them; yet they are separate
corporations, and choose each of them two members of Parliament,
just as London and Southwark.
Weymouth is a sweet, clean, agreeable town, considering its low
situation, and close to the sea; it is well built, and has a great
many good substantial merchants in it who drive a considerable
trade, and have a good number of ships belonging to the town. They
carry on now, in time of peace, a trade with France; but, besides
this, they trade also to Portugal, Spain, Newfoundland, and
Virginia; and they have a large correspondence also up in the
country for the consumption of their returns; especially the wine
trade and the Newfoundland trade are considerable here.
Without the harbour is an old castle, called Sandfoot Castle; and
over against them, where there is a good road for ships to put in
on occasions of bad weather, is Portland Castle, and the road is
called Portland Road. While I was here once, there came a
merchant-ship into that road called Portland Road under a very hard
storm of wind; she was homeward bound from Oporto for London, laden
with wines; and as she came in she made signals of distress to the
town, firing guns for help, and the like, as is usual in such
cases; it was in the dark of the night that the ship came in, and,
by the help of her own pilot, found her way into the road, where
she came to an anchor, but, as I say, fired guns for help.
The venturous Weymouth men went off, even before it was light, with
two boats to see who she was, and what condition she was in; and
found she was come to an anchor, and had struck her topmasts; but
that she had been in bad weather, had lost an anchor and cable
before, and had but one cable to trust to, which did hold her, but
was weak; and as the storm continued to blow, they expected every
hour to go on shore and split to pieces.
Upon this the Weymouth boats came back with such diligence that in
less than three hours they were on board them again with an anchor
and cable, which they immediately bent in its place, and let go to
assist the other, and thereby secured the ship. It is true that
they took a good price of the master for the help they gave him;
for they made him draw a bill on his owners at London for 12 pounds
for the use of the anchor, cable, and boat, besides some gratuities
to the men. But they saved the ship and cargo by it, and in three
or four days the weather was calm, and he proceeded on his voyage,
returning the anchor and cable again; so that, upon the whole, it
was not so extravagant as at first I thought it to be.
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