ngly gave up his large and fashionable practice as a surgeon
in Clifton, and, at very brief notice, hurried off to South Africa to
occupy the position of senior surgeon to the Princess Christian
Hospital.

He was mentioned by Lord Roberts in despatches, and the Companionship of
the Order of St. Michael and St. George was conferred on him.

Small wonder then, that on Mr. Lansdown's retirement from the Bristol
Medical Officership at the end of 1903, Lord Stanley should have
selected Mr. Paul Bush to fill the appointment.

Mr. Bush had the further claim to the appointment as being a medical man
born in the city of Bristol, and having for an ancestor Paul Bush, the
first Bishop of Bristol, who was born in 1491. He is the son of the late
Major Robert Bush, 96th Regiment, who was particularly patriotic in
having largely assisted in the formation of the 1st Bristol Rifle
Volunteer Corps, of which he became Colonel in command. In addition to
certain honorary medical and surgical appointments in the city, Mr. Bush
holds the position of chief surgeon to the Bristol Constabulary.

[Illustration: MR. J. PAUL BUSH, C.M.G.]

CHAPTER XIV.

SMALL (THE POST OFFICE) STREET, BRISTOL. ITS ANCIENT HISTORY,
INFLUENTIAL RESIDENTS, HISTORIC HOUSES; THE CANNS; THE EARLY HOME OF
THE ELTON FAMILY.

From time immemorial Small Street, in the city and county of Bristol,
two-thirds of the west side of which the Post Office occupies, has been
an important street. One of the nine old town gates was at the bottom of
it, and was known as St. Giles's Gate, having obtained this name from
a church dedicated to St. Giles, the patron saint of cripples and
beggars, which in the fifteenth century stood at the end of
"Seynt-Lauren's-Laane." Here, history says, was the "hygest walle of
Bristow," which has "grete vowtes under it, and the old chyrch of Seynt
Gylys was byldyd ovyr the vowtes." The cutting of the trench, from the
old Stone Bridge to near Prince Street Bridge, for the new channel of
the Froom, was completed in 1247. Before this date ships could only lie
in the Avon, where the bottom was "very stony and rough"; but the bed of
the new course of the Froom having turned out to be soft and muddy, it
became the harbour for the great ships, and Small Street from this time
became a principal thoroughfare. Then to this quarter of the town came
Bristol's greatest merchants. From the centre of the town to the old
Custom House, at the lower end of