



Produced by Nick Hodson of London, England




The Settlers at Home, by Harriet Martineau.

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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.

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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 stood empty, to be gradually overgrown with green
moss and lank weeds, which no hand cleared away.

At last a Dutchman, having seen what wonders were done in his own
country by good draining, thought he could render this district fit to
be inhabited and cultivated; and he made a bargain with the king about
it.  After spending much money, and taking great pains, he succeeded.
He drew the waters off into new channels, and kept them there by
sluices, and by carefully watching the embankments he had raised.  The
land which was left dry was manured and cultivated, till, instead of a
reedy and mossy swamp, there were fields of clover and of corn, and
meadows of the finest grass, with cattle and sheep grazing in large
numbers.  The dwellings that were still standing were made into
farm-houses, and new farmhouses were built.  A church here, and a chapel
there was cleaned, and warmed, and painted, and opened for worship; and
good roads crossed the district into all the counties near.

Instead of being pleased with this change, the people of the country
were angry and discontented.  Those who lived near had been long
accustomed to fishing and fowling in the swamp, without paying any rent,
or having to ask anybody's leave.  They had no mind now to settle to the
regular toilsome business of farming,--and to be under a landlord, to
whom they must pay rent.  Probably, too, they knew nothing about
farming, and would have failed in it if they had tried.  Thus far they
were not to be blamed.  But nothing can exceed the malignity with which
they treated the tenants who did settle in the isle, and the spiteful
spirit which they showed towards them, on every occasion.

These tenants were chiefly foreigners.  There was a civil war in England
at that time: and the Yorkshire and Lincolnshire people were so much
engaged in fighting for King Charles or for the Parliament, that fewer
persons were at liberty to undertake new farms than there would have
been in a time of peace.  When the Dutchman and his companions found
that the English were not disposed to occupy the Levels (as the drained
lands were called), they encouraged some of their own countrymen to come
over.  With them arrived some few Frenchmen, who had been driven from
France into Holland, on account of their being Protestants.  From first
to last, there were about two hundred families, Dutch and French,
settled in the Levels.  Some were collected into a village, and had a
chapel opened, where a pastor of their own performed service for them.
Others were scattered over the district, living just where their
occupations required them to settle.

All these foreigners were subject to bad treatment from their
neighbours; but the stragglers were the worst off; because it was
easiest to tease and injure those who lived alone.  The disappointed
fishers and fowlers gave other reasons for their own conduct, besides
that of being nearly deprived of their fishing and fowling.  These
reasons were all bad, as reasons for hating always are.  One excuse was
that the new settlers were foreigners--as if those who were far from
their own land did not need particular hospitality and kindness.
Another plea was that they were connected with the king, by being
settled on the lands which he had bargained to have drained: so that all
who sided with the parliament ought to injure the new tenants, in order
to annoy the king.  If the settlers had tried to serve the king by
