C.141.dd.8(16)

Genre: Landscape Photography

View showing a boat loaded with hay being punted along a waterway in the fens, with a smaller boat in the foreground: 'The more cultivated and thoroughly-drained marshes yield a hay of high quality, while the rough stuff grows in abundance on the half-drained ground, or on the rands and walls of the river, though too coarse for fodder, makes valuable litter...When dry, the hay is forked up into heaps: these are borne to the nearest dike on two poles, passed underneath in such a manner as to support the load when carried by two men walking between them, one in front of and one behind the burden [for this method of transportation, see plate 17]. This picturesque mode of conveyance is adopted because the load has to be carried over ground so soft that cart or barrow would be worse than useless. At the dyke the hay is pitched into large flat-bottomed boats, and rowed or quanted away to some staithe, where it is piled on shore ready for the waggons which bear it away to the farmyard. In the dike scene two mowers are at work upon the wall; two more men are quanting [i.e. poling] a loaded boat into the river. One of them, in the bow, is hidden, but his quant can be seen; the other stands on the heaped-up hay and steers, with his pole pressed against his thigh, to make the boat turn the corner...Against the bank [in the left foreground] lies a second boat, loaded ready for the men when they return from the staithe with the empty one. In the foreground a man — who perhaps comes from the steam mill near by, for by his dress he is not a marshman — shoves his boat lightly along the dike. The pose is simple enough, but yet full of subtle drawing, and very interesting. A flood of silvery light bathes all the scene, rounds the trees, and softens the distant outlines. The tone of the whole is perfect in harmony; we love this little picture...'