to the soil, and the nature and situation thereof.* Dugdale, speaking of the low country, says, "Our "ancestors, the Saxons, observing the extraordinary "fertility of the soil, seated themselves in this country," of which there is evidence from the survey taken by king William, shewing that the towns now in being were all existing in the days of king Edward the Confessor, and might probably have been so for divers preceding ages. The church of Ely was possessed of Walpole long before the time of the Confessor, and it was a place of no small note as giving birth to St. Goderick, the hermit. † And although time and the accumulation of sullage heightened the surface, still the old towns might stand near the places where they now are, as the churches may probably stand upon foundations laid on the old surface of the country, notwithstanding the actual ground upon which the houses are now built is much higher than the level in ancient. times. It has been an inquiry, by what means the level was so drowned as that woods should be torn up by the roots, and so great a proportion of silth brought in as to cover the ground to such an extraordinary depth? We might perhaps reasonably reply, that the very deposits of the tides would in time form a barrier, so as to prevent * The Pomentin Fens, in Latium, had been drained by Cornelius Cethegus, the consul, and made a rich and populous country, but when the maintenance of the works was neglected, the waters again by degrees gained upon the land, so that in Vespasian's time, these fens were become so re-stagnated, that it was then esteemed a miracle they should ever have been so well drained and inhabited as they had been.-Yet they were again drained and the land recovered by the emperor Trajan. ↑ He lived about 1070. Dug. p. 244. B the water passing through the fens to the estuary below, and that by successive irruptions of the sea, the silth would be deposited and the woods destroyed. The country is known to be, at this day, destitute of wood and timber, although numbers of trees, overgrown with moor through a long time of stagnation of waters, have for many years been taken up in various parts of the level; and multitudes of roots of large trees, at the bottom and sides of drains, have also been found standing as they had grown, three feet under the moorish soil; whilst from others, the bodies had manifestly been sawn off, and taken down by the hands of men, and that, not as if in a way of profit or use, some appearing to be burnt and others sawn off and lying useless, so that it may be judged, that in all probability, the latter were taken down for military purposes, to clear the way and destroy the shelter of the natives who had been secured thereby; and if so, the trees found burnt, or severed from their roots, may be presumed to have been taken down by the Romans. Most of them may have been indigenæ or natives of the soil in which they grew, until the district became fen by the overflowing of the rivers, or by violent inundations of the sea, destroying the banks originally raised by the Romans.* Dugdale, in his invaluable work, states, that it has been imagined by some, that an earthquake may have * All the trees would first decay near the ground, where they were sometimes wet and sometimes dry, and finally fall into the water, where the mud and decayed vegetative matter, which now constitutes the rich fen moor, would ultimately cover them to the present depth. Ellstob. caused the great change in the country, and, accordingly, adduces an instance of one happening A. D. 368, in the consulship of Valens, which overthrew not only several cities, but altered the very bounds of the sea. With every deference to this high authority, we are unwilling to attribute the change to any such cause, having no recorded account that this happy island has ever been considerably affected by any extraordinary convulsion of nature. The same learned writer observes in another place, that William of Malmsbury,* an authentic historian, represents Thorney a very paradise for beauty of country, and that he had in his own time received from credible testimony, that upon the cutting of certain moats at Whittlesey by F. Underwood, Esq.† there were found about seven feet deep, (through absolute moor) firm ground and swathes of mowed grass lying perfect and not consumed, by which, he observes, it is manifest that some excessive rain, falling in the summer time, had caused such a flood of fresh waters, as then meeting with an obstruction in the outfall in regard of the silth there contracted by a long season of dry weather, the usual current of the waters to the sea was so hindered, that being forced back, they overflowed the whole level, and kept it, for the most part, under water, until the general undertaking of drainage. It is, therefore, not improbable that some such causes as those just enumerated, succeeded by a general inundation and superfluity of waters, may have been the means of altering the entire * He wrote in the time of Henry II.-1155. † Dug. p. 360. He says, these moats were cut about twenty years before his time, which would bring the period to about 1635, face of the country, and tearing up the very trees and woods with which it once abounded. If we now turn our views to the rivers, and consider the alterations occasioned by them, we shall find that the obstructions in the outfall would, in process of time, materially change the face of this extensive district; we shall, therefore, next state The Rise and Course of the Rivers passing through the Level, the Grand Outfall whereof was at Wisbech. First, the Grant, which, having its origin about Ashwell, in Hertfordshire, and bringing with it the waters of part of that county and part of Essex, passes through Cambridgeshire, and unites itself to a branch of the Ouze below Stretham Mere. The Ouse* rises at a certain spring called Ousewell, near Brackley, in Northamptonshire, and passing through part of Buckingham and Bedfordshire, descends by Huntingdon,† and enters Cambridgeshire at a place called the Hermitage, in the parish of Haddenham, near to Earith, where it formerly divided into two branches,— the one falling by Earith below Stretham Mere, where it received the river Grant from Cambridge, and passing to Ely, and thence to Prickwillow, where the Mildenhall river falls in, ran, united with that river, to Littleport Chayre, Welney, and Shrewsnest Point. The second branch, formerly called the West Water, ran in a |