CÅ“perit, & rerum paulatim sumere formas. Virg. Ecl. VI.
which may thus be englished.
He sang, how from the mighty void, in one
Large space, collected were the fluid seeds
Of earth, air, sea and fire; from these came all.
The callow world became one massive globe;
The ocean by the hard’ning ground disjoin’d,
New forms surpris’d the beauteous face of things.
The truth of this observation I have seen universally confirmed in all my travels, and innumerable instances of it will occur to the reader throughout these discourses. I design another time professedly to treat of it in a philosophical way. But consequent to this doctrine it is that we have so large a quantity of this marshland in the middle of the eastern shore of England, seeming as if made by the washings and eluvies of the many rivers that fall that way, such as the Welland, the Witham, the Nen, the Ouse great and little, together with many other streams of inferior note. These all empty themselves into the great bay formed between the Lincolnshire wolds and cliffs of Norfolk, called by Ptolemy Mentaris æstuarium, as rightly corrected by Mr. Baxter, seeing it is composed of the mouths of so many rivers; Ment, or Mant, signifying ostium in the British language. Beside the great quantity of high and inland country that discharges its waters this way, even as far as Fritwell in Oxfordshire; all the level country lies before it, extending itself from within some few miles of Cambridge south, to Keal hills near Bolingbroke in Lincolnshire north, about sixty miles long, known by the names of the Isle of Ely, Holland and Marshland. This country, since the flood, I believe was much in the same state as at present, and for its bulk the richest spot of ground in the kingdom; once well inhabited by gentry, especially the religious. I apprehend the more inland part of it, the Isle of Ely, Deeping Fen, &c. was not in distant ages in so bad a condition as now, because the natural drainage of it was better, before the sea had by degrees added so much solid ground upon the coasts.
Holland, its name.