He cannot praise enough--his speech may be mythical; but as written
by Richard of Ely, only one generation after, it must describe
faithfully what the place was like--the wonders of the isle: its
soil the richest in England, its pleasant pastures, its noble
hunting-grounds, its store of sheep and cattle (though its vines, he
says, as a Frenchman had good right to say, were not equally to be
praised), its wide meres and bogs, about it like a wall. In it was,
to quote roughly, 'abundance of tame beasts and of wild stag, roe,
and goat, in grove and marsh; martens, and ermines, and fitchets,
which in hard winter were caught in snares or gins. But of the kind
of fish and fowl which bred therein, what can I say? In the pools
around are netted eels innumerable, great water wolves, and pickerel,
perch, roach, burbot, lampreys, which the French called sea-serpents;
smelts, too; and the royal fish, the turbot [surely a mistake for
sturgeon], are said often to be taken. But of the birds which haunt
around, if you be not tired, as of the rest, we will expound.
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