As We Descended Westward We Saw The Fen Country On Our Right,
Almost All Covered With Water Like A Sea,
The Michaelmas rains
having been very great that year, they had sent down great floods
of water from the upland
Countries, and those fens being, as may be
very properly said, the sink of no less than thirteen counties--
that is to say, that all the water, or most part of the water, of
thirteen counties falls into them; they are often thus overflowed.
The rivers which thus empty themselves into these fens, and which
thus carry off the water, are the Cam or Grant, the Great Ouse and
Little Ouse, the Nene, the Welland, and the river which runs from
Bury to Milden Hall. The counties which these rivers drain, as
above, are as follows:-
Those marked with (*) empty all their waters this way, the rest but
in part.
In a word, all the water of the middle part of England which does
not run into the Thames or the Trent, comes down into these fens.
In these fens are abundance of those admirable pieces of art called
decoys that is to say, places so adapted for the harbour and
shelter of wild fowl, and then furnished with a breed of those they
call decoy ducks, who are taught to allure and entice their kind to
the places they belong to, that it is incredible what quantities of
wild fowl of all sorts, duck, mallard, teal, widgeon, &c., they
take in those decoys every week during the season; it may, indeed,
be guessed at a little by this, that there is a decoy not far from
Ely which pays to the landlord, Sir Thomas Hare, 500 pounds a year
rent, besides the charge of maintaining a great number of servants
for the management; and from which decoy alone, they assured me at
St. Ives (a town on the Ouse, where the fowl they took was always
brought to be sent to London) that they generally sent up three
thousand couple a week.
There are more of these about Peterborough, who send the fowl up
twice a week in waggon-loads at a time, whose waggons before the
late Act of Parliament to regulate carriers I have seen drawn by
ten and twelve horses a-piece, they were laden so heavy.
As these fens appear covered with water, so I observed, too, that
they generally at this latter part of the year appear also covered
with fogs, so that when the downs and higher grounds of the
adjacent country were gilded with the beams of the sun, the Isle of
Ely looked as if wrapped up in blankets, and nothing to be seen but
now and then the lantern or cupola of Ely Minster.
One could hardly see this from the hills and not pity the many
thousands of families that were bound to or confined in those fogs,
and had no other breath to draw than what must be mixed with those
vapours, and that steam which so universally overspreads the
country.
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