We passed many months at this place: nothing, however, occurred requiring any particular notice, relating to myself, beyond what I have already stated, and I am not writing the history of others. At length {33} my father was recalled to his regiment, which at that time was stationed at a place called Norman Cross, in Lincolnshire, or rather Huntingdonshire, at some distance from the old town of Peterborough. For this place he departed, leaving my mother and myself to follow in a few days. Our journey was a singular one. On the second day we reached a marshy and fenny country, which, owing to immense quantities of rain which had lately fallen, was completely submerged. At a large town we got on board a kind of passage-boat, crowded with people; it had neither sails nor oars, and those were not the days of steam-vessels; it was a treck-schuyt, and was drawn by horses. Young as I was, there was much connected with this journey which highly surprised me, and which brought to my remembrance particular scenes described in the book which I now generally carried in my bosom. The country was, as I have already said, submerged--entirely drowned--no land was visible; the trees were growing bolt upright in the flood, whilst farmhouses and cottages were standing insulated; the horses which drew us were up to the knees in water, and, on coming to blind pools and "greedy depths," were not unfrequently swimming, in which case the boys or urchins who mounted them sometimes stood, sometimes knelt, upon the saddle and pillions. No accident, however, occurred either to the quadrupeds or bipeds, who appeared respectively to be quite _au fait_ in their business, and extricated themselves with the greatest ease from places in which Pharaoh and all his hosts would have gone to the bottom. Night-fall brought us to Peterborough, and from thence we were not slow in reaching the place of our destination. CHAPTER IV Norman Cross--Wide Expanse--Vive l'Empereur--Unpruned Woods--Man with the Bag--Froth and Conceit--I beg your Pardon--Growing Timid--About Three o'clock--Taking One's Ease--Cheek on the Ground--King of the Vipers--French King--Frenchmen and Water.