“From the highlands in Suffolk (between the Mildenhall and Brandon rivers) to the east of Welney, Outwel, Emneth, and thence to the sea a positive dividing ground exists, formed by the hand of nature, strongly marked, and distinctly to be seen between the waters of the Lynn and of the Wisbeach Ouse. The hanging level, or natural inclination of the Country on the north side of this dividing ground draws the waters off to the sea through the lesser Ouse to the outfall of Lynn; and on the south side of it draws them off to the sea through the greater Ouse to the outfall of Wisbeach. To the cutting through this dividing ground, in order to force the water of the greater into the lesser Ouse, are all the evils of the south and middle levels of the fens, and of the country below originally and solely to be ascribed. At this time the bed of the Ouse where Denver Sluices now stand, was at least 13 feet below the general surface of the surrounding country; and then it was that, by the free action and reaction of the tides the waters flowed five hours in the haven of Lynn, ascended unto the Stoke and Brandon rivers, and into other streams which nature had wisely appropriated to be discharged through that outfall; forming the bed of the Ouse to one gradually inclined plain _from the junction of the principal branches of that river into the low country to the level of the Ocean_, _very near or in the harbour of Lynn_. The Counteracting this disposition of nature by forcing a greater quantity of water into the river than it could discharge into the sea during the time of ebb, necessarily occasioned the highland and foreign waters to override all those, which during the time of ebb, would naturally have drained into the Lynn river, and gave the waters of Buckingham and Bedford an exit into the sea in preference to those which lay inundating the country within a few miles, of their natural outfall.—In this condition at present are all the lower parts of the country bordering upon the Lynn Ouse; and the country above Denver Sluices, Downham, Marshland, and Bardolph fens, exhibits the most important of many other melancholy examples and evidences of it. In the higher parts of the country the consequences of this measure seem to have been severely experienced on the lands exposed to the unembanked waters of the old Ouse, between Hermitage and Harrimere. The Old Bedford river was then cut from Erith to Salter’s Lode, as a slaker to the Ouse, to relieve the country through which the Ouse flowed, from Erith to Ely. The Ouse waters thus divided a great part of them descended through the Old Bedford river in a straight line of twenty miles into the Lynn Ouse. But as that work was judged insufficient and defective, the New Bedford, or