'
And yet the fancy may linger, without blame, over the shining meres,
the golden reed-beds, the countless water-fowl, the strange and gaudy
insects, the wild nature, the mystery, the majesty--for mystery and
majesty there were--which haunted the deep fens for many a hundred
years. Little thinks the Scotsman, whirled down by the Great
Northern Railway from Peterborough to Huntingdon, what a grand place,
even twenty years ago, was that Holme and Whittlesea, which is now
but a black, unsightly, steaming flat, from which the meres and reed-
beds of the old world are gone, while the corn and roots of the new
world have not as yet taken their place.
But grand enough it was, that black ugly place, when backed by
Caistor Hanglands and Holme Wood, and the patches of the primaeval
forest; while dark-green alders, and pale-green reeds, stretched for
miles round the broad lagoon, where the coot clanked, and the bittern
boomed, and the sedge-bird, not content with its own sweet song,
mocked the notes of all the birds around; while high overhead hung,
motionless, hawk beyond hawk, buzzard beyond buzzard, kite beyond
kite, as far as eye could see.
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