OLD BOAT OF BRIGG shows on either side on which the planking rested. One very interesting feature in it was that the boat had been repaired, with a patch of oak boarding six feet by one foot, on the starboard side, the board being bevelled at the edges and pegged on with oak pins. A similar boat made out of a huge oak tree is in the portico of the British Museum. In this, which is fifty feet long and four feet wide, tapering off a little at either end, both the ends and two thwarts are left solid. The latter are not more than six inches high, but sufficient to add considerably to the strength of the hull. The boat is three inches thick at the gunwale and possibly more at the bottom, and has no keel. But this most interesting relic of Viking days has been removed from Brigg, for what reasons I know not, to the Museum at Hull, and is no longer in the county. A British corduroy road or plank causeway was also found below the mud from which the boat was dug out, and is therefore probably of greater age, though such a mud-bearing stream as the Humber can make a considerable deposit in a very short time. This fact is illustrated by the process of "warping," which is described in the chapter on the Isle of Axholme.
Brigg, without its old boat, has little to detain us, so we can pass to Wrawby, and then desert the main road, which goes east through a gap in the Wold to Brocklesby, and turn northwards to Elsham, where we come up against the most northerly portion of the "Wolds" as distinguished from the "Cliff" or Ridge which lies more to the west. The main road or highway to Barton runs right up the hill and crosses the Wold obliquely, and, as usual, being on the high ground, exhibits no villages in the whole of its course, but we will turn sharp to the left and take a byway which goes by "the Villages" of which we shall pass through no less than half a dozen in the six miles between Elsham and the Humber.
At Elsham is the seat of Sir John Astley. The church has a rich tower doorway with curious sculptured stones on either side.
Any road which runs by the edge of a curving range of hills is sure to be picturesque; and the continuation of the Wolds south of Elsham, after the Barnetby Gap, where the railway line gets through the Wolds without tunnelling, with the string of villages all ending in "by," Bigby, Somerby, Searby, Owmby, Grasby, Clixby, Audleby, and Fonaby, which lead the traveller to Caistor, affords pleasant travelling. But it does not come up
