ed
monolith of a former civilization has stood amid its uncontemporary
surroundings, battered more sorely by thirty years of London's wind and
weather than by its ages of African sunshine.

"Billingsgate" was one of the earliest water-gates of London, the first on
the site having been built in the year 400 B. C., and named after Belin,
King of the Britons. The present "Billingsgate Market" is a structure
completed in 1870. Since 1699 London's only _entrepot_ for the edible
finny tribe has been here, with certain rights vested in the ancient
"Guild of Fishmongers," without cognizance of which it would not be
possible to "obtain by purchase any fish for food."

[Illustration: BILLINGSGATE.]

A stage floats in the river off the market, beside which float all manner
of craft, from the humble wherry to the ostentatious puffy little
steamers who collect the cargoes of the North Sea fleet and rush them to
market against all competitors. The market opens at five A. M., summer and
winter. Moored to a buoy, a short distance from the shore, are always to
be found one or more Dutch fishing-boats, certain inalienable rights
permitting "no more than three" to be at any or all times tied up here.
There is among the native watermen themselves a guarded jealousy and
contempt for these "furriners," and should the cable once be slipped, no
other Dutchman would ever again be allowed to pick it up. Hence it is that
by traditionary rights one or more of these curious stub-nosed,
broad-beamed craft, like the Dutch _haus-vrow_ herself, are always to be
seen.

The Londoner found amusement at Whitsun-tide in a visit to Greenwich Fair,
then an expedition of far greater importance than in later years, the
journey having to be made by road. The typical "fish dinner" of Greenwich,
as it obtained in the middle of the last century, was an extraordinary
affair, perhaps the most curious repast which ever existed in the minds of
a culinary genius, or a swindling hotel-keeper,--for that is about what
they amounted to in the latter days of this popular function now
thankfully past.

Many and varied courses of fish, beginning with the famous "whitebait,"
the "little silver stars" of the poet's fancy, more or less skilfully
prepared, were followed by such gastronomic unconventions as "Duck and
Peas," "Beans and Bacon," and "Beef and Yorkshire," all arranged with due
regard for inculcating an insatiable and expensive thirst, which was only
allayed a