they must break; every one was surprised that
they held out so long. Those banks were raised
to hold the drainage of a certain Fen country
many miles away. They had easy work of it.
They were strong enough for so light a place
—a quiet sluggish ooze of water lying very
low, with banks high above it, and higher still
above the surrounding flat country. The banks
of that straight long drain had quite a sinecure
of it. Suddenly this weight and torrent of
waters is borne in. It is as if a cutter were
loaded with the cargo of a barque. A boy hired
to open the door or carry physic-bottles, is to do
the work of a coal-heaver. A basket-carriage is
used for a brewer's-dray. How long can it go
on? When will the break-down take place,
and where?

For eight days the tide swept backwards and
forwards, as it ebbed and flowed, and still the
banks held on. Some said " they will go here,"
and some " they will fall there." The people
interested in the matter, holding land on either
side the drain, gathered together, with the
labourers who worked on the soil, and watched
the weaker places eagerly. And so at six
o'clock one Monday morning as many as two
hundred of them were gathered together near
to one specially weak spot, waiting for what
they knew must come, when, at a distance of
some three feet from the top of the bank, a
thin spout of water, such as would issue from
a pump, burst through a hole in the side of
the earthen wall, and poured in a clear water-spout
straight out on to the surrounding land.
It came through that hole like the water out
of a fireman's hose, and some of the peasants
who saw it told me that it described an arch in
its course, and only touched the ground some
twenty yards from where it started.

This was only the affair of an instant, and
the ice once broken thus, mass after mass of
the bank gave way. Soon a breach of a hundred
yards was made, and the waters ran in upon
the land.

The land here lies so low and is so
extraordinarily flat, that it seems wonderful that
those waters are stopped at all. The country
intersected with drains, with pollard willows
along its water-courses, with vegetation of a
singular luxuriance, and its groups of cattle
standing and lying about in the rich pastures,
would remind one of Paul Potter, if it were
not so much brighter and prettier than anything
that monotonous old mechanic had in his
heavy head.

The case of the landowners here, and, indeed,
of all those persons whom the inundation has
affected, is especially hard: the drain which has
burst was not their drain. It was not
constructed to relieve their land, but, on the
contrary, the water-courses by which they are
drained pass underneath the bed of this Middle
Level Drain, which was brought through this
part of the country against the wish of the
proprietors of the soil. The Middle Level is
some thirty miles away, in another part of the
country; and the drain merely passes through
the districts where the accident has happened
on its way to the Ouse, into which, at certain
states of the tide (for the Ouse is here a tidal
river), it discharges its superfluous water.

The commissioners, then, of the Middle Level
Drain, who were responsible for its construction
and for its maintenance in a perfect condition of
security, were bound to be especially vigilant in
caring for the safety of the land through which
they brought this dangerous water-course. To
relieve their own Middle Level District, they
made an opening in the great embankment of
the tidal river. That opening they guarded with
a sluice, and upon the soundness of that sluice
the inhabitants of the neighbouring districts of
Marshland and Magdalen Fen depended for the
security of their possessions. As it has turned
out, the sluice was not sound; the Marshland
and surrounding districts are flooded.

It is always difficult to be impartial in making
ex post facto comments. If no disaster had
followed, the little attention paid by the authorities
to certain signs of weakness exhibited by the
sluice, would have escaped without censure. We
are all influenced by results, and the results in
this case have been lamentable.

Briefly, the case seems to stand thus: the
proprietors of the land in the neighbourhood where
this accident has happened, protested strongly,
at the time when this drain was proposed,
against its being brought through their
property. Their protests were disregarded by the
House of Commons' committee which sat in
judgment on the project. This point strengthens
the case of the injured inhabitants and
proprietors of the land. Their protest put aside
and permission granted for the works to proceed,
the next question is, how those works were
executed? In spite of certain weak points in
the banks of the drain, which the commonest
looker-on cannot fail to observe, there seems
little doubt that these were strong enough for
any pressure which there was a
probability of their having to sustain; for it must
be remembered that they were never intended
to bear an irruption of the tidal river. The
main structure of the drain being thus
disposed of, we come to the far more important
question as to the soundness of the sluice itself
—the gate which kept out the tide from rushing
into the drain, and virtually (for no drain could
hold that great and powerful river) over the
surrounding country.

Upon this point, of course all sorts of contrary
opinions prevail. Some will tell you that the
arches of the sluice should have reposed upon an
invert, while others will affirm that the nature of
the river's bed rendered this impossible, and that
the foundation of piles, with a platform of four-inch
planking, was the very best base on which
the structure could be raised. You will hear
again that the sluice was built too far out into
the river, and so was needlessly exposed to the
violence of the waters; that its position was ill
chosen, as being too near the old bed of the river,
now no longer used; that for its very great
width it was inadequately thick and solid; that