Surveyed from the heights of Dunham, whence the writer has often gazed upon it, envying the plover her wing to skim over its broad expanse, it presented with its black boggy soil, striped like a motley garment, with patches of grey, tawny, and dunnish red, a singular and mysterious appearance.

Conjecture fixes this morass as the site of a vast forest, whose immemorial and Druid-haunted groves were burnt by the Roman invaders; and seeks to account for its present condition by supposing that the charred trees--still frequently found within its depths--being left where the conflagration had placed them, had choked up its brooks and springs, and so reduced it to a general swamp.

Drayton, however, in the following lines from the Faerie Land, places its origin as far back as the Deluge:-- -- --Great Chat Moss at my fall Lies fall of turf and marl, her unctuous mineral; And blocks as black as pitch, with boring augers found, There at the General Flood supposed to be drown'd.
But the former hypothesis appears the more probable.

A curious description of Chat Moss, as it appeared at the time of this history, is furnished by Camden, who terms it, "a swampy tract of great extent, a considerable part of which was carried off in the last age by swollen rivers with great danger, whereby the rivers were infected, and great quantities of fish died.

Instead thereof is now a valley watered by a small stream; and many trees were discovered thrown down, and lying flat, so that one may suppose when the ground lay neglected, and the waste water of brooks was not drained off into the open valleys, or their courses stopped by neglect or desolation, all the lower grounds were turned into swamps, (which we call _mosses_,) or into pools.