"I remember the time when we'd none of those
improvements; no side entrances, no nothing.
When we wanted to get down to cleanse or look
at a sewer, we had to dig a hole in the roadway,
and sometimes the men used to get down and
up the gully-holes to save trouble."

"You must have had many accidents in those
days?"

"Hundreds, sir, were suffocated or killed by
the gas; but since Mr. Roe* brought about
these improvements, and made the sewers curve
instead of running zigzag, we've been pretty
safe."
* The late Mr. Roe, for many years surveyor to
the Holborn and Finsbury Commissioners of Sewers.

The "gas" alluded to by Agrippa includes
carburetted hydrogen, sulphuretted hydrogen, and
carbonic acid gas. The first is highly inflammable,
easily explodes, and has frequently caused
serious accidents. The second is the gaseous
product of putrid decomposition; it is slightly
inflammable, and its inhalation, when it is strong,
will cause sudden death. The third is the choke-
damp of mines and sewers, and its inhalation
will cause a man to drop as if shot dead. These are
the unseen enemies which Agrippa and his
fellows have constantly to contend against, more or
less.

As we staggered further down the stream, it
was evident that Agrippa had his favourites
among the district sewers. Some he
considered to be "pretty" sewers; others he
looked upon as choked winding channels, not
fit to send a rat up to cleanse, much less a
Christian man. Looking up some of these
narrow openings with their abrupt turns, low roofs,
and pitch-black darkness, it, certainly did seem
as if sewer-cleansing must be a fearful trade.
The sewer rats, much talked of aboveground, were
not to be seen; and their existence in most of the
main sewers is a tradition handed down from
the last century. Since the improved supply of
water, which is said to give to every dweller in
London, man, woman, and child, a daily allowance
of forty gallons per head, the rats have
been washed away by the increased flood.

Although underground, we passed over the
metropolitan railway in the New-road, and then
along the line of Baker-street, under Oxford-
street, and through Berkeley-square. This
aristocratic neighbourhood was loudly announced
to us by our abovegrouud followers, down an
open "man-hole;" but there was nothing in the
construction of our main sewer, or in the quality
of our black flood, to tell us that we were so
near the abodes of the blest. Looking up the
"man-hole," an opening in the road, not unlike
the inside of a tile-kiln chimney, down which
some workmen had brought a flushing-gate, I
saw another butcher's boy gazing down upon
us with his mouth wide open.

The flushing-gate was an iron structure, the
exact width of the sewer, and about half its
height. These gates are fixed on hinges at
the sides of all the main sewers at certain
distances from each other; and when they are
closed by machinery, they dam up the stream,
producing an artificial fall of water, and so
scouring the bed of the sewer.

As we got lower down our great underground
channel, the roof became higher and higher,
and the sides broader and broader; but the
flooring, I am sorry to say, became more jagged
and uneven. The lower bricks had been washed
out, leaving great holes, down which one or
other of my legs kept slipping at the hazard of
my balance and my bones. We peeped up an
old red-bricked long-disused branch sewer, under
some part of Mayfair, that was almost blocked
up to the roof with mountains of black dry
earthy deposit. Not even here did we see any
traces of rats, although the sewer was above the
level of the water in our main channel. The
King's Scholars' Pond (so Agrippa told me) has
had five feet of water in it, at this point, during
storms; but this was not its condition then, or
we should hardly have been found wading there.
The bricks in this old Mayfair sewer were as
rotten as gingerbread; you could have scooped
them out with a teaspoon.

In Piccadilly we went up the side entrance,
to get a mouthful of fresh air and a glimpse
of the Green Park, and then went down again to
finish our journey. I scarcely expect to be
believed, but I must remark that another butcher's
boy was waiting with open mouth, watching
every movement we made, with intense interest.

We had not proceeded much further in our
downward course, when Agrippa and the rest of
the guides suddenly stopped short, and asked
me where I supposed I was now?

"I give it up," I replied.

"Well, under Buckingham Palace," was the
answer.

Of course my loyalty was at once excited, and
taking off my fan-tailed cap, I led the way with
the National Anthem, insisting that my guides
should join in chorus. Who knows but what,
through some untrapped drain, that rude
underground melody found its way into some inner
wainscoting of the palace, disturbing some
dozing maid of honour with its mysterious
sounds, and making her dream of Guy Fawkes
and many other subterranean villains? Before
I leave this deeply-interesting part of the King's
Scholars' Pond Sewer, I may as well say that I
am fully alive to its importance as the theatre of
a thrilling romance. That no writer of fiction
may poach upon preserves which I have made
my own, I will state exactly what kind of story
I intend to write, as soon as I have got rid of a
row of statistics that are beckoning to me in the
distance. My hero will run away with one of
the Royal Princesses, down this sewer, having
first hewn a passage up into the palace through
its walls. The German Prince, who is always
going to marry the Royal Princess, whether she
likes him or not, will be murdered in mistake by
a jealous sewer-flusher, the villain of the story;
and the hero having married the Princess at
some bankside church, will live happily with her
ever afterwards, as a superintendent of one of
the outfall sewers. If this story should meet