Beyond £arith, where now run the great washes of the Bedford
Level, was a howling wilderness of meres, seas, reed*ronds, and
floating alder-beds, through which only the fen-men wandered,
with leaping-pole and log canoe.
What in the east ? The dry land neared the island on that
side. And it may be that William rowed round by Burwell to
Fordham and Soham, and thought of attempting the island by
way of Barraway, and saw beneath him a labyrinth of islands,
meres, fens, with the Ouse, now increased by the volume of the
Cam, lying deep and broad between Barraway and Thetford-in-
the-Isle ; and saw, too, that a disaster in that labyrindi might be
a destruction.
So he determined on the near and straight path, through Long
Stratton and Willingham, down the old bridle-way from Willing-
ham ploughed field, — every village there, and in the isle like-
wise, had and has still its ^' field," or ancient clearing of ploughed
land, — and then to try that terrible half-mile, with the courage
and wit of a general to whom human lives were as those of ^e
gnats under ^e hedge.
So all his host camped themselves in Willingham field, by the
old earthwork which men now call Belsar's Hills ; and down the
bridle-way poured countless men, bearing timber and fagots cut
from all die hills, that they might bridge the black half-nule.
