e of this beach, and between it and the land, there is, as I
have said, an inlet of water which they ferry over, as above, to pass and
re-pass to and from Portland: this inlet opens at about two miles west,
and grows very broad, and makes a kind of lake within the land of a mile
and a half broad, and near three miles in length, the breadth unequal. At
the farthest end west of this water is a large duck-coy, and the verge of
the water well grown with wood, and proper groves of trees for cover for
the fowl: in the open lake, or broad part, is a continual assembly of
swans: here they live, feed, and breed, and the number of them is such
that, I believe, I did not see so few as 7,000 or 8,000. Here they are
protected, and here they breed in abundance. We saw several of them upon
the wing, very high in the air, whence we supposed that they flew over
the riff of beach, which parts the lake from the sea, to feed on the
shores as they thought fit, and so came home again at their leisure.

From this duck-coy west, the lake narrows, and at last almost closes,
till the beach joins the shore; and so Portland may be said, not to be an
island, but part of the continent. And now we came to Abbotsbury, a town
anciently famous for a great monastery, and now eminent for nothing but
its ruins.

From hence we went on to Bridport, a pretty large corporation town on the
sea-shore, though without a harbour. Here we saw boats all the way on
the shore, fishing for mackerel, which they take in the easiest manner
imaginable; for they fix one end of the net to a pole set deep into the
sand, then, the net being in a boat, they row right out into the water
some length, then turn and row parallel with the shore, veering out the
net all the while, till they have let go all the net, except the line at
the end, and then the boat rows on shore, when the men, hauling the net
to the shore at both ends, bring to shore with it such fish as they
surrounded in the little way they rowed. This, at that time, proved to
be an incredible number, insomuch that the men could hardly draw them on
shore. As soon as the boats had brought their fish on shore we observed
a guard or watch placed on the shore in several places, who, we found,
had their eye, not on the fishermen, but on the country people who came
down to the shore to buy their fish; and very sharp we found they were,
and some that came with small carts were obliged to go back empty without
any fish.