These consist of lions, leopards, tigers, eagles, vultures, and such
other wild creatures as foreign princes or sea-officers have
presented to the British kings and queens.

Not far from the Tower stands London Bridge. This bridge has
nineteen arches besides the drawbridge, and is built with hewn
stone, being one thousand two hundred feet in length, and seventy-
four in breadth, whereof the houses built on each side take up
twenty-seven feet, and the street between the houses twenty feet;
there being only three vacancies about the middle of the bridge
where there are no houses, but a low stone wall, with an iron
palisade, through which is a fine view of the shipping and vessels
in the river. This street over the bridge is as much thronged, and
has as brisk a trade as any street in the city; and the perpetual
passage of coaches and carriages makes it troublesome walking on it,
there being no posts to keep off carriages as in other streets. The
middle vacancy was left for a drawbridge, which used formerly to be
drawn up when shipping passed that way; but no vessels come above
the bridge at this day but such as can strike their masts, and pass
under the arches. Four of the arches on the north side of the
bridge are now taken up with mills and engines, that raise the water
to a great height, for the supply of the city; this brings in a
large revenue which, with the rents of the houses on the bridge, and
other houses and lands that belong to it, are applied as far as is
necessary to the repair of it by the officers appointed for that
service, who are, a comptroller and two bridge-masters, with their
subordinate officers; and in some years, it is said, not less than
three thousand pounds are laid out in repairing and supporting this
mighty fabric, though it be never suffered to run much to decay.