and suddenly you learned, while smelling the dust, that Acapulco was
more than a portent in a book and held only by an act of faith. Yet
that astonishing revelation, enough to make any youthful messenger
forget where he himself was bound, through turning to follow with his
eyes that acceptance by a carrier's cart of the verity of the fable, is
nowhere mentioned, I have found since, in any guide to London, though
you may learn how Cornhill got its name.

For though Londoners understand the Guildhall pigeons have as much
right to the place as the aldermen, they look upon the seabirds by
London Bridge as vagrant strangers. They do not know where their city
ends on the east side. Their River descends from Oxford in more than
one sense. It has little history worth mentioning below Westminster.
To the poets, the River becomes flat and songless where at Richmond the
sea's remote influence just moves it; and there they leave it. The
Thames goes down then to a wide grey vacuity, a featureless monotony
where men but toil, where life becomes silent in effort, and goes out
through fogs to nowhere in particular. But there is a hill-top at
Woolwich from which, better than from Richmond, our River, the
burden-bearer, the road which joins us to New York and Sydney, can be
seen for what it is, plainly related to a vaster world, with the ships
upon its bright path moving through the smoke and buildings of the
City. And surely some surmise of what our River is comes to a few of
that multitude who cross London Bridge every day? They favour the east
side of it, I have noticed, and they cannot always resist a pause to
stare overside to the Pool. Why do they? Ships are there, it is true,
but only insignificant traders, diminished by sombre cliffs up which
their cargo is hauled piece-meal to vanish instantly into mid-air
caverns; London absorbs all they have as morsels. Anyhow, it is the
business of ships. The people on the bridge watch another life below,