many cases, are lower still than those outside.

So they hurry away to the nearest farms; the teams are harnessed, the
waggons filled, and drawn down and emptied; the beer-cans go round
cheerily, and the men work with a sort of savage joy at being able to
do something, if not all, and stop the sluice on which so much
depends. As for the outer land, it is gone past hope; through the
breach pours a roaring salt cataract, digging out a hole on the
inside of the bank, which remains as a deep sullen pond for years to
come. Hundreds, thousands of pounds are lost already, past all hope.
Be it so, then. At the next neap, perhaps, they will be able to mend
the dyke, and pump the water out; and begin again, beaten but not
conquered, the same everlasting fight with wind and wave which their
forefathers have waged for now 800 years.

He who sees--as I have seen--a sight like that, will repine no more
that the primaeval forest is cut down, the fair mere drained. For
instead of mammoth and urus, stag and goat, that fen feeds cattle
many times more numerous than all the wild venison of the primaeval
jungle; and produces crops capable of nourishing a hundred times as
many human beings; and more--it produces men a hundred times as
numerous as ever it produced before; more healthy and long-lived--and
if they will, more virtuous and more happy--than ever was Girvian in
his log-canoe, or holy hermit in his cell. So we, who knew the deep
fen, will breathe one sigh over the last scrap of wilderness, and say
no more; content to know that -


'The old order changeth, yielding place to new,
And God fulfils himself in many ways,