Dikes skirt the margins of the streams, and wind-mills are engaged in perpetual toil to raise the water from the fields into the channels by which it is conveyed away.
Crowland is at the confluence of two rivers, which flow sluggishly through this flat but beautiful and verdant region.

The remains of the old abbey still stand, built on piles driven into the marshy ground, and they form at the present time a very interesting mass of ruins.
The year before Alfred acceded to the throne, the abbey was in all its glory; and on one occasion it furnished _two hundred_ men, who went out under the command of one of the monks, named Friar Joly, to join the English armies and fight the Danes.
The English army was too small notwithstanding this desperate effort to strengthen it.

They stood, however, all day in a compact band, protecting themselves with their shields from the arrows of the foot soldiers of the enemy, and with their pikes from the onset of the cavalry.

At night the Danes retired, as if giving up the contest; but as soon as the Saxons, now released from their positions of confinement and restraint, had separated a little, and began to feel somewhat more secure, their implacable foes returned again and attacked them in separate masses, and with more fury than before.

The Saxons endeavored in vain either to defend themselves or escape.