Dark and sad were those short autumn days,
when all the distances were shut off, and the air choked with foul brown
fog and drenching rains from off the eastern sea; and pleasant the
bursting forth of the keen north-east wind, with all its whirling
snowstorms. For though it sent men hurrying out into the storm, to drive
the cattle in from the fen, and lift the sheep out of the snow-wreaths,
and now and then never to return, lost in mist and mire, in ice and
snow;--yet all knew that after the snow would come the keen frost and the
bright sun and cloudless blue sky, and the fenman's yearly holiday, when,
work being impossible, all gave themselves up to play, and swarmed upon
the ice on skates and sledges, and ran races, township against township,
or visited old friends full forty miles away; and met everywhere faces as
bright and ruddy as their own, cheered by the keen wine of that dry and
bracing frost.
Such was the Fenland; hard, yet cheerful; rearing a race of hard and
cheerful men; showing their power in old times in valiant fighting, and
for many a century since in that valiant industry which has drained and
embanked the land of the Girvii, till it has become a very "Garden of the
Lord." And the Scotsman who may look from the promontory of Peterborough,
the "golden borough" of old time; or from the tower of Crowland, while
Hereward and Torfrida sleep in the ruined nave beneath; or from the
heights of that Isle of Ely which was so long "the camp of refuge" for
English freedom; over the labyrinth of dikes and lodes, the squares of
rich corn and verdure,--will confess that the lowland, as well as the
highland, can at times breed gallant men.
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