To assist the agent, Mr. Challoner Dent was appointed storekeeper from 1st April 1797 on getting two gentlemen as security for £1,000. There were clerks and ten turnkeys, twelve labourers at 12_s._ a week, and a lamplighter at 13_s._ a week. The chief clerk and Dutch interpreter was Mr. James Richards. The transport officer in charge, Captain Woodriff, had to make arrangements for the conveyance of the expected prisoners to Norman Cross, and for the victualling. As to the former, he was on the 23rd March directed without loss of time to proceed to Norman Cross near Stilton, and thence to Lynn to report as to the best anchorage there, and the best mode of transporting the prisoners of war expected. He was to consult a Mr. Hadley, who proposed 1_s._ a head for removing the prisoners, which was considered exorbitant and quite out of the question. On 29th March, however, he was directed to enter into an agreement with Mr. Kempt, to convey the prisoners from Lynn to Yaxley at 1_s._ 6_d._ per head, and Kempt’s partner was to victual them on the following daily ration: 1 lb. of bread or biscuit, ¾ lb. of good fresh or salt beef. The time occupied by the barges in which the men were to be conveyed would probably be about three days, and the dietary could not be much varied. At the date when this contract was made, nearly fifty years before the first railway in this district was opened, the waterways offered the easiest and cheapest channel for the transport of heavy goods across the great Fen district. The rivers, natural and artificial, and the navigable drains and cuts, fulfilled a double purpose, and were maintained by taxes and tolls not only for the drainage of the Fens, but as waterways for the lucrative traffic which was constant along their surface. It was by water that George Borrow and his mother travelled to join his father in his quarters at Norman Cross, and we have again a graphic account of the impressions left on the child’s mind by the journey from Lynn to Peterborough when the washes and Fenlands were flooded—an account written long after the child had come to man’s estate, when distance had lent enchantment to the view and certainly depth to the pools on the towing paths. “At length 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 these were not the days of steam-vessels; it was a treck-schuyt, and was drawn by horses.