The country through which we traveled next day is level and apparently productive fanning land.  The season had been unusually dry and favorable to the fen land, as this section is called.  The whole country between Boston and Norwich has scarcely a hill and the numerous drains showed that it is really a reclaimed marsh.  In this section English farming appeared at its best.  The crops raised in England and Scotland consist principally of wheat, oats and various kinds of grasses.  Our Indian corn will not ripen and all I saw of it was a few little garden patches.  The fen country faintly reminds one of Holland, lying low and dotted here and there with huge windmills.  As a matter of curiosity, we visited one of the latter.  The miller was a woman, and with characteristic English courtesy she made us acquainted with the mysteries of the ancient mill, which was used for grinding Indian corn for cattle-feed.

Our route for the day was a circuitous one, as there were numerous points that we wished to visit before coming to Norwich for the night.  A broad, level road leads from Boston to King’s Lynn, a place of considerable size.  Its beginning is lost in antiquity, and a recent French writer has undertaken to prove that the first settlement of civilized man in Britain was made at this point.  We entered the town through one of the gateways, which has no doubt been obstructing the main highway for several hundred years.  It is a common thing in the English towns to find on the main street one of the old gates, the opening through which will admit but one vehicle at a time, often making it necessary to station a policeman on each side to see that there are no collisions.  But the gateways have been standing for ages and it would be sacrilege to think of tearing them down to facilitate traffic.  Just outside King’s Lynn we passed Sandringham Palace, a spacious modern country house and one of the favorite homes of the Royal Family.

[Illustration:  St. Botolph’s church from the river, Boston.]

A few hours through winding byways brought us to the village of Burnham Thorpe, the birthplace of Admiral Nelson.  It is a tiny hamlet, whose mean-looking, straggling cottages with red tiles lack the artistic beauty of the average English village—­the picturesque, thatched roofs and brilliant flower gardens were entirely wanting.  The admiral was the son of the village rector, but the parsonage in which he was born was pulled down many years ago.  Still standing, and kept in good repair, is the church where his father preached.  The lectern, as the pulpit-stand in English churches is called, was fashioned of oak taken from Nelson’s flagship, the Victory.  The father is buried in the churchyard and a memorial to Nelson has been erected in the church.  The tomb of the admiral is in St. Paul’s Cathedral in London.