"an inland sea in winter, and a noxious swamp in summer"; but so slight is the rise of the land that to the superficial observer it scarcely seems to rise at all. Here—on this "Isle of Crowland"—as it was formerly called in company with other similar islands, such as the better-known "Isle of Ely"—the old monks built their abbey, remote and fen-*girt from the outer world, only to be approached at first by boats, and, in long years after also, by a solitary raised causeway frequently under water and nearly always unsafe and untravellable in winter. The problem to me is how ever all the stone required for the building was secured. Presumably most of it was brought down the Welland from Stamford; but what a long and laborious task the carrying of it must have been. Still, the problem sinks into insignificance like that of Stonehenge, for all authorities on this mysterious monument of antiquity agree that the nearest spot to Salisbury Plain from which the igneous rocks that compose the inner circle could come, would be either Cornwall or North Wales! An effective word-picture of the early monastery is given in Kingsley's Hereward the Wake which I take the liberty to quote, though he describes the building as being chiefly of timber, but the first historic record declares that it was "firmly built of stone." Thus, then, Kingsley writes: "And they rowed away for Crowland . . . and they glided on until they came to the sacred isle, the most holy sanctuary of St. Guthlac and his monks. . . . At last they came to Crowland minster, a vast range of high-peaked buildings founded on
