Page:The Zoologist, 4th series, vol 1 (1897).djvu/470

442 It "forms roughly a triangle, of which the ridge of high land running north for six miles from Reedham to Acle Bridge constitutes the base, and the two sides are represented by the courses of the rivers Bure and Yare, each for a distance of about seven miles in a straight line, converging at Yarmouth, and enclosing a tract of country shown on Faden's fine map, surveyed in the years 1790–94, with but a single marsh-road winding along near its centre, from Halvergate to a point about half-way between Reedham and Yarmouth, where it joins a similar track which follows the river bank from the former place; their joint course is then continued along the north banks of Breydon to the town of Yarmouth.

"Marshall, in his 'Rural Economy of Norfolk,' speaking of this great level, significantly remarks that it is 'tolerable in summer,' and then relates his experience of a visit which he paid on the 17th June, 1782. Entering the marshes at Halvergate, he says that for nearly the first mile they rode to their horses' knees in water! They then inspected a marsh-mill, of which Faden's map shows only thirteen in the whole level (these doubtless altogether not equal in efficiency to one of the powerful steam mills which have supplanted them), and, making a sweep towards the middle of the marsh, they returned to Wickhampton, where, he states, the entrance to the marsh was always free from water. This great expanse of marsh was perhaps the finest Snipe ground in England; as many as seventy or eighty couple are there said to have fallen to one gun in a single day; and it formed the breeding-place of thousands of Ruffs, and who can tell what other birds, for there is little known of it and its inhabitants in those days, when only the shepherds and sportsmen ever trod its splashy soil. Although perfectly treeless, this great plain was not one dead level; there were sufficient irregularities to render certain portions drier than others, and these 'hills,' as they were called by the marshmen, formed the nesting-places of the Ruffs, Redshanks, Snipes, and other marsh-loving species, which frequented them in summer in large numbers; whilst on the wooded highlands to the north, along which the old Yarmouth road runs, Herons had their homes; and at Acle