Here we have a bit of roadway without any
pavement; there a bit of pavement with one
narrow track of roadway: at one place our
proper route appears like an entrance to a
warehouse; while, at another, a warehouse
entrance seems to lie in our proper route.
Below, we encounter barrels, casks, sacks,
hampers, and bales, filled with various
commodities. Above, we see galleries or
gangways stretching across from the wharfs
and warehouses to the granaries and
cornmills.

All kinds of mercantile odours present
themselves for notice in turn. At a warehouse
gateway we see a bill announcing a sale
of raw goods at the Commercial Sale Rooms
in Mincing Lane; the commodities are
American horn-tips, East India buffalo horns,
African cattle bones, ox and deer skins, and
odoriferous guano—all of which are "on
view" in this Pickle Herring establishment.
In short, as Tooley Street has its salesmen,
factors, store-shippers, ship biscuit bakers,
outfitters, ship-chandlers, and others connected
with shipping and commercial matters,
so does the Pickle Herring region bring us
one stage nearer the actual ships and
commodities themselves. And thus we have
another link in the Bermondsey chain.

Advancing a little farther east, before
leaving the water-side, we come to Horsleydown
and Saint Saviour's Dock, and here the
granaries and steam corn mills are so many
and so large, that they force themselves upon
our notice. Besides the corn brought to
London from our own counties, in coasters,
which carry from two hundred to twelve
hundred quarters each, it is now (thanks to
corn-law repeal) brought also from foreign
countries in loads of two or three thousand
quarters each. After being measured by the
City meters, and the City dues paid, the corn
is carried to the granaries in Shad Thames,
and elsewhere, where it is stored in vast
quantity until required for selling, or for
grinding. At these granaries, the granary-rent,
fire-insurance, and wages for tending
and screening, are said to amount to about
seven shillings per week for one hundred
quarters of corn. The steam mills for grinding
the corn into flour on the spot, instead of
sending it into the country to be ground by
windmills, may be regarded as one of the
modern industrial features, almost unknown
to our millers a few years ago. This vast
corn-trade gives us a third link in the
Bermondsey chain.

Further east we will not go; it leads to
Rotherhithe, and its timber yards, and timber
docks, its Surrey Canals, and Thames Tunnels.
And yet we must go a little further east, even
to see whether Jacob's Island has cleansed
itself lately. Alas! it is very little more
than an "Island of the Blessed" than in past
years; and we must pity any Jacob who is
obliged to live there. In days long gone by,
Bermondsey had a rich and beautiful Abbey,
supplied with water by a stream which
extended to the Thames near this point; and
the tanners, and curriers, and fell-mongers,
the glue-makers and hat-makers, in more
recent days, were dependent on this stream
for a supply of water to aid their manufacturing
operations. But now that the Abbey
is gone, and that steam-engines are rapidly
superseding water-wheels, and that water
companies are "laying-in" water, and that
manufacturers are sinking Artesian Wells,
the Folly stream has become Folly Ditch.
A dirty ditch it was thirty years ago, when
Wilkinson depicted it in his "Londina
Illustrata;" a dirty ditch it was when
"Oliver Twist" was written; a dirty ditch
it still is. There are a few faint marks of
improvement visible; but Jacob's Island and
Halfpenny Alley, and Farthing Alley, within,
and around, and between which the Folly
Ditch stretches its slimy length, are no credit
to our sanitary age. There is a street called
Hickman's Folly close at hand; who Hickman
was, we do not know, nor whether
Hickman belonged to the Folly, or the Folly
to Hickman; but there the Folly, encompassing
Jacob's Island, still is; and we are
sorry to have to give it a place as a fourth
link in the Bermondsey chain.

Now, we fairly leave the river, and skirt the
land-ward boundary of Bermondsey. Another,
and a totally different aspect is presented;
we have got among the market-gardeners,
whose treeless, but very rich grounds
supply so largely to Covent Garden and other
markets. It is said that, vast as is the metropolis,
three-fourths of the vegetable supply
for its two and a quarter million of eaters
are grown within a radius of twelve miles
from Covent Garden; and within a radius of
fifteen miles there are two hundred thousand
acres of land in the hands of market-gardeners,
all labouring for London the Great. Of the
ten thousand loads of turnips, the hundred
thousand sacks of peas, the twenty million
heads of celery, the forty million cabbages,
the thousand tons of water-cresses, &c., said
to be sold annually in Covent Garden Market,
how much of this is grown in the Bermondsey
region we cannot say. This we can say, that
if the ruined Protectionists of more distant
counties wish to be convinced of the wonders
of high farming; or to see what agricultural
science, hand labour, and high wages can do
for land which, without these appliances,
would grow little else than rushes; let them
take a survey of the low-lying market-gardens
of Kent and Surrey. The enormous produce
we have enumerated above is not got out of
those grounds without immense capital and
unwearied skill having been first put into
them. Three and four crops a year off the
same spots do not spring up spontaneously.

At two or three o'clock on market mornings
the waggons are receiving their stores
of fresh green vegetables, and wending
their way through the London streets to