Another peculiar distinction of this city was its former government by a portreve. The term is now obsolete, but in the old English law it denoted the chief magistrate of a port or maritime town. In its old form it was written "portgerefa," a combined word meaning port, a harbour, and "gerefa," a reeve or sheriff. In the third year of the reign of George I. the city, with a district of twenty miles round it, was erected into a county, under the designation of "The City and County of the City of Lincoln." It was also entered as a maritime county. The extreme flatness of the Lincolnshire coast, with the slow sluggishness of the lower part of the course of the rivers, caused, in remote ages, the inundation of a great tract of land. The feasibility of reclaiming some portion of these fens received the attention of the Romans. They constructed the large drain called the car-dyke, signifying the fen-dyke, carrying it from the river Witham, near Lincoln, to the river Welland on the southern side of the county, with the object of draining the waters from the high grounds and of preventing the inundation of the low grounds. This policy was adopted in subsequent reigns with great success, and is even to this day continued. It has been the means of bringing rich tracts of land into cultivation, and of dispelling the unhealthy miasma which once caused the great prevalency of the ague fever. From fragments of vessels found near its channel it is affirmed that large ships of bygone days could formerly sail up the river Witham from Boston to Lincoln, but now it is only navigable for barges. [Illustration: LINCOLN THE STEEP HILL] In 1121 Henry I. materially altered the great Foss-Dyke, extending a matter of eight miles from a great marsh near Lincoln to the river Trent, to serve the double purpose of draining the adjacent level and of constructing a high waterway for vessels from the Trent to Lincoln. For defraying the expenses of draining, it appears that in general a rate was levied upon all lands in the contiguous wapentakes. With this preface of the general character of the district, we propose to give a history of the city from its commencement.