



Produced by Nick Hodson of London, England




The Settlers at Home, by Harriet Martineau.

________________________________________________________________________
This shortish novel first appeared in 1841, and was published in a
collection of the author's four short 1841 novels, "The Playfellow".

The scene is set in Lincolnshire, a part of England much of which is
flat and prone to flooding by the sea.  It was drained in the 1600s by
Dutch engineers by the creation of drains and sea defences.  To this day
part of the county is called Holland.  After the draining the land was
leased by the King to various settlers from overseas, among whom were
the Linacres, the hero-family of this book.  The King's enemies break
down the sea defences, and the land is flooded, with haystacks, mills
and barns floating away, farm animals drowning, and everyone in great
peril.  By various mishaps the three Linacre children and a boy from a
roguish nomadic family, are deprived of the Linacre mother and father
just when they most need them, and find themselves in the care of
Ailwin, the strong and sturdy maid-of-all-work.  Before they can get
reunited with the parents, Geordie, the weakly two-year-old, dies, and
they have various struggles for survival, with foul water killing many
of the animals they would rely on for food.  At last help comes in the
form of the local pastor, who has enlisted the aid of some men to row
him to wherever he is needed.

This book is pretty strong reading, and probably more of a tragedy than
any other category.

________________________________________________________________________
THE SETTLERS AT HOME, BY HARRIET MARTINEAU.



CHAPTER ONE.

THE SETTLERS AT HOME.

Two hundred years ago, the Isle of Axholme was one of the most
remarkable places in England.  It is not an island in the sea.  It is a
part of Lincolnshire--a piece of land hilly in the middle, and
surrounded by rivers.  The Trent runs on the east side of it; and some
smaller rivers formerly flowed round the rest of it, joining the Humber
to the north.  These rivers carried down a great deal of mud with them
to the Humber, and the tides of the Humber washed up a great deal of
sea-sand into the mouths of the rivers; so that the waters could not for
some time flow freely, and were at last prevented from flowing away at
all: they sank into the ground, and made a swamp of it--a swamp of many
miles round the hilly part of the Isle of Axholme.

This swamp was long a very dismal place.  Fish, and water-birds, and
rats inhabited it: and here and there stood the hut of a fowler; or a
peat-stack raised by the people who lived on the hills round, and who
obtained their fuel from the peat-lands in the swamp.  There were also,
sprinkled over the district, a few very small houses--cells belonging to
the Abbey of Saint Mary, at York.  To these cells some of the monks from
Saint Mary's had been fond of retiring, in old times, for meditation and
prayer, and doing good in the district round; but when the soil became
so swampy as to give them the ague as often as they paid a visit to
these cells, the monks left off their practice of retiring hither; and
their little dwellings