Even the fish are shy of
haunting a bottom which shifts with every storm; and innumerable
shrimps are almost the only product of the shallow barren sea:
beside, all is silence and desolation, as of a world waiting to be
made.
So strong is the barrier which these sea-borne sands oppose to the
river-borne ooze, that as soon as a seabank is built--as the
projectors of the 'Victoria County' have built them--across any part
of the estuary, the mud caught by it soon 'warps' the space within
into firm and rich dry land. But that same barrier, ere the fen was
drained, backed up for ages not only the silt, but the very water of
the fens; and spread it inland into a labyrinth of shifting streams,
shallow meres, and vast peat bogs, on those impervious clays which
floor the fen. Each river contributed to the formation of those bogs
and meres, instead of draining them away; repeating on a huge scale
the process which may be seen in many a highland strath, where the
ground at the edge of the stream is firm and high; the meadows near
the hillfoot, a few hundred yards away, bogland lower than the bank
of the stream.
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