The Reason, As A Merry Fellow Told
Me, Who Said He Had Had About A Dozen And A Half Of Wives (Though I
Found Afterwards He Fibbed A Little) Was This:
That they being
bred in the marshes themselves and seasoned to the place, did
pretty well with it; but that they always went up into the hilly
country, or, to speak their own language, into the uplands for a
wife.
That when they took the young lasses out of the wholesome
and fresh air they were healthy, fresh, and clear, and well; but
when they came out of their native air into the marshes among the
fogs and damps, there they presently changed their complexion, got
an ague or two, and seldom held it above half a year, or a year at
most; "And then," said he, "we go to the uplands again and fetch
another;" so that marrying of wives was reckoned a kind of good
farm to them. It is true the fellow told this in a kind of
drollery and mirth; but the fact, for all that, is certainly true;
and that they have abundance of wives by that very means. Nor is
it less true that the inhabitants in these places do not hold it
out, as in other countries, and as first you seldom meet with very
ancient people among the poor, as in other places we do, so, take
it one with another, not one-half of the inhabitants are natives of
the place; but such as from other countries or in other parts of
this country settle here for the advantage of good farms; for which
I appeal to any impartial inquiry, having myself examined into it
critically in several places.
From the marshes and low grounds being not able to travel without
many windings and indentures by reason of the creeks and waters, I
came up to the town of Malden, a noted market town situate at the
conflux or joining of two principal rivers in this county, the
Chelm or Chelmer, and the Blackwater, and where they enter into the
sea. The channel, as I have noted, is called by the sailors Malden
Water, and is navigable up to the town, where by that means is a
great trade for carrying corn by water to London; the county of
Essex being (especially on all that side) a great corn county.
When I have said this I think I have done Malden justice, and said
all of it that there is to be said, unless I should run into the
old story of its antiquity, and tell you it was a Roman colony in
the time of Vespasian, and that it was called Camolodunum. How the
Britons, under Queen Boadicea, in revenge for the Romans' ill-usage
of her--for indeed they used her majesty ill--they stripped her
naked and whipped her publicly through their streets for some
affront she had given them. I say how for this she raised the
Britons round the country, overpowered, and cut in pieces the Tenth
Legion, killed above eighty thousand Romans, and destroyed the
colony; but was afterwards overthrown in a great battle, and sixty
thousand Britons slain.
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