of the world, except in Holland, have more industry and skill been displayed in reclaiming and preserving the soil, than in Lincolnshire and the districts of the Great Bedford Level. Six hundred and eighty thousand acres of the most fertile land in England, or an area equal to that of North and South Holland, have been converted from a dreary waste into a fruitful plain, and fleets of vessels traverse the district itself, freighted with its rich produce. Taking its average annual value at 41. an acre, the addition to the national wealth and resources may be readily calculated.

The prophecies of the decay that would fall upon the country, if "the valuable race of Fen-men" were deprived of their pools for pike, and fish, and wild-fowl, have long since been exploded. The population has grown in numbers, in health, and in comfort, with the progress of drainage and reclamation. The Fens are no longer the lurking places of disease,' but as salubrious as any other parts of England. Dreary swamps are supplanted by pleasant pastures, and the haunts of pike and wild-fowl have become the habitations of industrious farmers and husbandmen. Even Whittlesea Mere and Ramsey Mere, the only two lakes, as we were told in the geography books of our younger days, to be found in the south of England,-have been blotted out of the map, for they have been drained by the engineer, and are now covered with smiling farms and pleasant homesteads.

1 It is stated in a recent report of the Registrar-General that, whilst the mortality of Pau in the Pyrenees, a

place resorted to by British invalids on account of its salubriousness, is 23 in 1000, that of Ely is only 17 in 1000.

CHAPTER V.

STOPPAGE OF DAGENHAM BREACH-CAPTAIN PERRY.

BEFORE dismissing from consideration those early undertakings of embankment and drainage, we may briefly allude to further works which were rendered necessary by the neglected embankment of the Thames down to a comparatively recent period.

The banks first raised seemed to have been in many places of insufficient strength; and when a strong northeasterly wind blew down the North Sea, and the waters became pent up in that narrow part of it lying between the Belgian and the English coasts, and especially when this occurred at a time of the highest spring tides, the strength of the river embankments became severely tested throughout their entire length, and breaches often took place, occasioning destructive inundations.

Thus, in the year 1676, a serious breach took place at Limehouse, by which a number of houses was destroyed, and it was with great difficulty the waters could be banked out again. The wonder is that sweeping, as the new current did, over the Isle of Dogs, in the direction. of Wapping, and in the line of the present West India Docks, the channel of the river was not then permanently altered. But Deptford was already established as a royal dockyard, and probably the diversion of the river would have inflicted as much local injury, judging by comparison, as it unquestionably would do at the present day. The breach was accordingly stemmed, and the course of the river held in its ancient channel by Deptford and Greenwich. Another destructive inundation shortly after occurred through a breach made in the

embankment of the West Thurrock Marshes, in what is called the Long Reach, nearly opposite Greenhithe ; where the lands remained under water for seven years, and it was with great difficulty the breach could be closed. But at length the tides were shut out, leaving a large lake upon the land in the direction in which the waters had rushed; and the breach and lake are to be found marked on the maps to this day.

But the most destructive and obstinate breach of all was that made by the river in the north bank a little to the south of the village of Dagenham, by which the whole of the Dagenham and Havering Levels lay drowned at every tide. It will be remembered that a similar breach had occurred about 1621, which Vermuyden had succeeded in stopping; and at the same time he embanked or "inned" the whole of Dagenham Creek, through which the little rivulet flowing past the village of that name found its way to the Thames. Across the mouth of this rivulet Vermuyden had erected a sluice, of the nature of a "clow," being a strong gate suspended by hinges, which opened to admit of the egress of the inland waters at low tide, and closed against the entrance of the Thames when the tide rose. It happened, however, that a heavy inland flood, and an unusually high spring tide, occurred simultaneously during the prevalence of a strong north-easterly wind, in the year 1707; when the united force of the waters meeting from both directions blew up the sluice, the repairs of which had been neglected, and in a very short time nearly the whole area of the above Levels was covered by the waters of the Thames.

At first the gap was so slight as to have been easily closed, being only from 14 to 16 feet broad. But having been neglected, the tide ran in and out of the opening for years, and every tide wore the channel deeper, and made the stoppage of the breach more difficult. At length the channel was upwards of 30 feet deep at low water,

and about 100 feet wide; and a lake more than a mile and a half in extent was formed inside the line of the river embankment. Above a thousand acres of rich lands were spoiled for all useful purposes, and by the scouring of the waters out and in at every tide, about a hundred and twenty acres were completely washed away. The soil was carried into the channel of the Thames, where it formed a bank of about a mile in length, reaching half way across the river. This state of things could not be allowed to continue, for the navigation of the Thames was seriously interrupted by the obstruction, and there was no knowing where the mischief would stop.

Various futile attempts were made by the adjoining landowners to stem the breach. They filled old ships with chalk and stones, and had them scuttled and sunk in the hole, throwing in baskets of chalk and earth outside them, together with bundles of straw and hay to stop up the interstices; but when the full tide rose, it washed them away like so many chips, and the opening was again bored clean through. Then the expedient was tried of sinking into the hole gigantic trunks made expressly for the purpose, fitted tightly together, and filled with chalk. Power was obtained to lay an embargo on the cargoes of chalk and ballast contained in passing ships, for the purpose of filling these machines, as well as damming up the gap; and as many as from ten to fifteen freights of chalk a day were thrown in, but without effect. One day when the tide was on the turn, the force of the water lifted one of the monster trunks sheer up from the bottom, when it toppled round, the lid opened, out fell the chalk, and, righting again, the immense box floated out into the stream and down the river. One of the landowners interested in the stoppage ran along the bank, and shouted out at the top of his voice "Stop her! oh stop her!" But the unwieldy object being under no guidance was carried down stream towards the shipping

lying at Gravesend, where its unusual appearance, standing so high out of the water, excited great alarm amongst the sailors. The empty trunk, however, floated safely past, down the river, until it reached the Nore, where it stranded upon a sandbank.

The Government next lent the undertakers an old royal ship called the Lion, for the purpose of being sunk in the breach, which was done, with two other ships; but the Lion was broken in pieces by a single tide, and at the very next ebb not a vestige of her was to be seen. No matter what was sunk, the force of the water at high tide bored through underneath the obstacle, and only served to deepen the breach. After the destruction of the Lion, the channel was found deepened to 50 feet at low water, at the very place where she had been sunk.

All this had been merely tinkering at the breach, and every measure that had been adopted merely proved the incompetency of the undertakers. The obstruction to the navigation through the deposit of earth and sand in the river being still on the increase, and after the bank had been open for a period of seven years, an Act was passed in 1714, enabling it to be repaired at the public expense. But it is an indication of the very low state of engineering ability in the kingdom at the time, that several more years passed before the measures taken with this object were crowned with success, and the opening was only closed after a fresh succession of failures. The works were first let to one Boswell, a contractor. He proceeded very much after the method which had already failed so egregiously, sinking two rows of caissons or chests across the breach, between which he proposed to erect the piles and drift work; but his chests were blown up again and again. Then he tried pontoons of ships, which he loaded and sunk in the opening; but the force of the tide, as before, rushed under and around them, and broke them all to pieces, the only result being to make the

gap in