One very great inconvenience, which the inhabitants of this low country labour under, is the want of good water, especially in dry summers, owing to the scarcity of springs. Rain-water is the only water they can have for domestic uses, almost throughout the year: to preserve which they have troughs and spouts constructed and fixed under the eves of the houses, by which it is conveyed into cisterns and reservoirs for the use of their families. Even such populous towns as Boston and Wisbeach have no better means of supplying themselves with good water; which in most parts of Britain would be deemed an intolerable grievance. To Lynn, however, the above case does not apply. The country on its eastern side abounds with good springs, from which the town is plentifully supplied with excellent water, as not to be exceeded in that respect, perhaps, by any place in the kingdom.
In Marshland and other parts of the country, it is with no small difficulty that water can be procured for the cattle in very dry seasons. Instances not few, are said to have been known at such times, of their being driven daily some miles to water, as none could be procured at a nearer distance. Such is the spongy quality of the soil in these parts, that pits dug to preserve the rain water would not retain it unless they were previously bottomed with clay, by which the water is prevented from sinking into the earth. Such pits are dug almost in every field; and for all the care and expence bestowed upon them, they are often found empty and useless long before the end of a very dry summer. Thus it appears, that this country, so fertile and desirable in some respects, has its advantages greatly counter-balanced by some very serious inconveniences, from which the more hilly and sterile districts of the kingdom are happily exempted. On the whole, when the advantages and disadvantages of this low fertile country are fairly compared with those of the more barren and mountainous regions, it will probably be found that the favours of providence are much more equally distributed than we are sometimes apt to imagine.
Here it may be further observed, that the system of agriculture, and even the implements of husbandry are different in marshland and the fens from those of the higher parts of Norfolk; which is probably to be ascribed to the soil, or quality of the land being very different in the one from what it is in the other. In the former it is for the most part strong and heavy, but weak and light in the latter, so as not to require more than two horses to draw the plough, and which are uniformly managed without a driver.
Section X.
Miscellaneous observations continued—Fen reeds and their uses—Starlings—Tame Geese, and singular management of them—Insalubriousness of Marshland—Ancient celebrity of the Smeeth—Decoys.
Many parts of the fens abound with a remarkable species of reeds, which appear in summer, at some distance, like extensive fields of corn. In autumn, and at the approach of winter, they are resorted to by innumerable flocks of Starlings, which then subsist upon the seeds of those plants, and lodge or roost among their branches; from whence, when scared, they ascend sometimes in such vast numbers as to appear in the sky like a thick cloud, exhibiting a very strange and striking spectacle to those beholders who are unused to the curious phenomena of this singular country. The fen-fowlers, in their long boats, take these birds sometimes by surprize, when thickly assembled among those reeds, and with their long guns make prodigious havock among them. Myriads of them are so destroyed, and become a considerable article of food in the latter months of the year.
The reeds to which these birds resort, and from whose seed, for many months, they derive a great part of their subsistence, are no less remarkable in another respect: vast quantities of them are cut down, or reaped like corn, in the latter part of summer; being afterward carefully dried and dressed, they are tied up in bundles or sheaves, made up into stacks or ricks, and sold for coverings of houses, making perhaps the best thatch in the world. Great numbers of houses and barns, and even some churches are covered with them about the Fens and Marshland, and the adjoining parts of Norfolk. They are laid on very thick, curiously, and judiciously, and constitute a very durable, as well as neat covering, which is said to last sometimes thirty or forty years, with a little shaving and trimming. It has been observed of thatch coverings (those made of these reeds must be particularly so) that they make the coolest houses in summer, and the warmest in winter of all coverings whatever; being more impervious both to heat and cold than any other materials used for the same purpose. Thatching is executed in this country in a style of superior neatness, as well as firmness, and better calculated for durability, than the writer of this has known any where else except, perhaps, in the Vale of Glamorgan, where a similar method is used. The material there, indeed is wheat straw, and not reeds, which in that country cannot be obtained in any large quantity; but the process of dressing and preparing the materials, as well as the method of laying them on, seem to be there and here much alike. It seems somewhat remarkable that districts so widely separated, and which are in most other respects so very dissimilar, should yet in this particular bear so near and striking a resemblance to each other. [79a]
Some parts of the Fens, especially on the Lincolnshire side, have been long famous for breeding vast flocks of tame Geese, of which great numbers are usually sent alive to the London markets.—They have also a remarkable custom of plucking the geese, and stripping them of their quills and feathers repeatedly every year, [79b] and so render each of them conformable to Plato’s memorable definition of man, “a two-legged, unfeathered animal:” in which view it might be called humanizing the poor geese, or converting them into so many human beings. The practice however, has been by many thought inhuman, and barbarous, as it must put the poor creatures into no small degree of pain; [80a] but as it is gainful to the owners, in yielding them a far greater quantity of feathers than they would otherwise produce, there is no great prospect of its being very soon, if ever, discontinued.
The geese, during the breeding season, are lodged in the same houses with the inhabitants, and even in their very bedchambers. In every apartment are three rows of coarse wicker pens, placed one above another. Each bird has a separate lodge, divided from the other, which it keeps possession of during the time of sitting. A gozzard, or gooseherd, attends the flock, and twice a day drives the whole to water, then brings them back to their habitation, helping those that live in the upper stories to their nests, without ever misplacing a single bird. [80b]
Another odd custom in some parts of this same country, is that of preparing cow-dung, and converting it into fuel, by forming it, in a wet state, into the shape of turf, and afterward drying it in the sun. It yields a strong disagreeable smell in burning, besides its depriving the farmer of a very large quantity of his best manure. Materials for fuel must, surely, have been very scarce in the country when this strange expedient or substitute was first adopted.