bourhood was willows; and it was a common saying there, that "the profit of willows will buy the owner a horse before that by any other crop he can pay for his saddle." There was so much water constantly lying above Ely, that in olden times the Bishop of Ely was accustomed to go in his boat to Cambridge. When the outfalls of the Ouse became choked up by neglect, the surrounding districts were subject to severe inundations; and after a heavy fall of rain, or after a thaw in winter, when the river swelled suddenly, the alarm spread abroad, "the bailiff of Bedford is coming!" the Ouse passing by that town. But there was even a more terrible visitor than the bailiff of Bedford; for when a man was stricken down by the ague, it was said of him, "he is arrested by the bailiff of Marsh-land;" this disease extensively prevailing all over the district when the poisoned air of the marshes began to work.

The great perils which constantly threatened the district at length compelled the attention of the legislature. In 1607, shortly after the accession of James I., a series of destructive floods burst in the embankments along the east coast, and swept over farms, homesteads, and villages, drowning large numbers of people and cattle. When the King was informed of the great calamity which had befallen the inhabitants of the Fens, principally through the decay of the old works of drainage and embankment, he is said to have made the right royal declaration, that "for the honour of his kingdom, he would not any longer suffer these countries to be abandoned to the will of the waters, nor to let them lie waste and unprofitable; and that if no one else would undertake their drainage, he himself would become their undertaker." A Commission was appointed to inquire into the extent of the evil, from which it appeared that there were not less than 317,242 acres of land lying outside the then dykes which required drainage and protection. A bill was brought into Parliament to enable rates to be levied for the drainage of this land, but it was summarily rejected. Two years later, a "little bill," for draining

6000 acres in Waldersea County, was passed — the first district Act for Fen drainage that received the sanction of Parliament. The King then called Chief-Justice Popham to his aid, and sent him down to the Fens to undertake a portion of the work; and he induced a company of Londoners to undertake another portion, the adventurers receiving two-thirds of the reclaimed lands as a recompense. "Popham's Eau," and "The Londoners' Lode," still mark the scene of their operations. The works, however, did not prove very successful, not having been carried out with sufficient practical knowledge on the part of the adventurers, nor after any well-devised plan. There were loud calls for some skilled undertaker or engineer (though the latter word was not then in use) to stay the mischief, reclaim the drowned lands, and save the industrious settlers in the Fens from total ruin. But no English engineer was to be found ready to enter upon so large an undertaking; and in his dilemma the King called to his aid one Cornelius Vermuyden, a Dutch engineer, a man well skilled in works of embanking and draining.

The necessity for employing a foreign engineer to undertake so great a national work is sufficiently explained by the circumstance that England was then very backward in all enterprises of this sort. We had not yet begun that career of industrial skill in which we have since achieved so many triumphs, but were content to rely mainly upon the assistance of foreigners. Holland and Flanders supplied us with our best mechanics and engineers. Not only did Vermuyden prepare the plans and superintend the execution of the Great Level drainage, but the works were principally executed by Flemish workmen. Many other foreign "adventurers" as they were called, besides Vermuyden, carried out extensive works of reclamation and embankment of waste lands in England. Thus a Fleming named Freeston reclaimed the extensive marsh near Wells in Norfolk; Joas Croppenburgh and his company of Dutch workmen reclaimed and embanked Canvey

Island near the mouth of the Thames; Cornelius Vanderwelt, another Dutchman, enclosed Wapping Marsh by means of a high bank, along which a road was made, called "High Street" to this day; while two Italians, named Acontius and Castilione, reclaimed the Combe and East Greenwich marshes on the south bank of the river.

We also relied very much on foreigners for our harbour engineering. Thus, when a new haven was required at Yarmouth, Joas Johnson, the Dutchman, was employed to plan and construct it. When a serious breach occurred in the banks of the Witham at Boston, Mathew Hakes was sent for from Gravelines, in Flanders, to repair it; and he brought with him not only the mechanics, but the manufactured iron required for the work. In like manner, any unusual kind of machinery was imported from Holland or Flanders ready made. When an engine was needed to pump water from the Thames for the supply of London, Peter Morice, the Dutchman, brought one from Holland, together with the necessary workmen.

England was in former times regarded principally as a magazine for the supply of raw materials, which were carried away in foreign ships, and returned to us worked up by foreign artisans. We grew wool for Flanders, as India, America, and Egypt grow cotton for England now. Even the wool manufactured at home was sent to the Low

Countries to be dyed. Our fisheries were so unproductive, that the English markets were supplied by the Dutch, who sold us the herrings caught in our own seas, off our own shores. Our best ships were built for us by Danes and Genoese; and when any skilled sailors' work was wanted, foreigners were employed. Thus, when the "Mary Rose" sank at Spithead in 1545, Peter de Andreas, the Venetian, with his ship carpenter and three Italian sailors, were employed to raise her, sixty English mariners being appointed to attend upon them merely as labourers.

In short, we depended for our engineering, even more than we did for our pictures and our music, upon foreigners.

J. B.

C

Nearly all the continental nations had a long start of us in art, in science, in mechanics, in navigation, and in engineering. At a time when Holland had completed its magnificent system of water communication, and when France, Germany, and even Russia had opened up important lines of inland navigation, England had not cut a single canal, whilst our roads were about the worst in Europe. It was not until the year 1760 that Brindley began his first canal for the Duke of Bridgewater.

After the lapse of a century we find the state of things has become entirely reversed. Instead of borrowing engineers from abroad, we now send them to all parts of the world. British-built steam-ships ply on every sea; we export machinery to all quarters, and supply Holland itself with pumping engines. During that period our engineers have completed a magnificent system of canals, turnpikeroads, bridges, and railways, by which the internal communications of the country have been completely opened up; they have built lighthouses round our coasts, by which ships freighted with the produce of all lands, when nearing our shores in the dark, are safely lighted along to their destined havens; they have hewn out and built docks and harbours for the accommodation of a gigantic commerce; whilst their inventive genius has rendered fire and water the most untiring workers in all branches of industry, and the most effective agents in locomotion by land and sea. Nearly all this has been accomplished during the last century, and much of it within the life of the present generation. How and by whom certain of these great things have been achieved, it is the object of the following pages to relate.

CHAPTER II.

SIR CORNELIUS VERMUYDEN

DRAINAGE OF THE FENS.

CORNELIUS VERMUYDEN, the Dutch engineer, was invited over to England about the year 1621, to stem a breach in the Thames embankment near Dagenham, which had been burst through by the tide. He was a person of good birth and education, and was born at St. Martin's Dyke, in the island of Tholen, in Zealand. He had been trained as an engineer, and having been brought up in a district where embanking was studied as a profession, and gave employment to a large number of persons, he was familiar with the most approved methods of protecting land against the encroachments of the sea. He was So successful in his operations at Dagenham, that when it was found necessary to drain the Royal park at Windsor, he was employed to conduct the work; and he thus became known to the king, who shortly after employed him in the drainage of Hatfield Level, then a royal chase on the borders of Yorkshire.

The extensive district of Axholme, of which Hatfield Chase formed only a part, resembled the Great Level of the Fens in many respects, being a large fresh-water bay formed by the confluence of the rivers Don, Went, Ouse, and Trent, which brought down into the Humber almost the entire rainfall of Yorkshire, Derbyshire, Nottingham, and North Lincoln, and into which the sea also washed. The uplands of Yorkshire bounded this watery tract on the west, and those of Lincolnshire on the east. Rising up about midway between them was a single hill, or rather elevated ground, formerly an island, and still known as the