Boffin's Bower was several miles distant, on the northern outskirt of
London. A string of carts, full of miscellaneous street and house rubbish,
all called here by the general name of "dust," were waiting their turn to
discharge. There was a mountain of this refuse at the end of the yard; and
a party of laborers, more or less impeded by two very active black hogs,
were sifting and sorting it. Other mounds, formed from the sittings of the
first, were visible at the sides. There were huge accumulations of broken
crockery and of scraps of tin and other metal, and of bones. There was a
quantity of stable-manure and old straw, and a heap, as large as a
two-story cottage, of old hoops stript from casks and packing-cases. I
never understood, until I looked into this yard, how there could have been
so much value in the dust-mounds at Boffin's Bower.

Gradually the streets became narrower, wetter, dirtier, and poorer.
Hideous little alleys led down to the water's edge where the high tide
splashed over the stone steps. I turned into several of them, and I always
found two or three muddy men lounging at the bottom; often a foul and
furtive boat crept across the field of view. The character of the shops
became more and more difficult to define. Here a window displayed a heap
of sailor's thimbles and pack-thread; there another set forth an array of
trumpery glass vases or a basket of stale fruit, pretexts, perhaps, for
the disguise of a "leaving shop," or unlicensed pawnbroker's
establishment, out of which I expected to see Miss Pleasant Riderhood come
forth, twisting up her back hair as she came. At a place where the houses
ceased, and an open space left free a prospect of the black and
bad-smelling river, there was an old factory, disused and ruined, like the
ancient mill in which Gaffer Hexam made his home, and Lizzie told the
fortunes of her brother in the hollow by the fire.

I turned down a muddy alley, where 12 or 15 placards headed "Body Found,"