OLD LONDON.

Matamata Record, Volume VII, Issue 587, 4 December 1924, Page 3

OLD LONDON.

WHEN SLAVE GIRLS WERE EXCHANGED. If when a visit is paid to London one cares to do a little exploring in the neighbourhood of Upper Thames street he can have the satisfaction of knowing that he is standing on one of the most ancient outposts of English civilisation.

Turn down Dowgate hill, which runs from Cannon street on the western side of Cannon street station, cross Upper Thames street, walk down the steep little lane which runs, slightly to the left, to the river. Here are wooden stairs, which may sometimes be descended at low tide, and here, on the strand of the Thames, is the bit of land on which the Britons conducted their first chafferings with the Gauls.

Here the Walbrook runs into the Thames, and here stood the ancient Dow-gate named from the Celtic word dwr, meaning watei*. The Dow-gate was the terminus of the long track which wound away from the river, over the ford at King's Cross, still called by its later name of Battle Bridge, over Hampstead Hill, and so to Verulam, now St Albans.

London was a very unimportant place in those days, nothing much more, indeed, than the port for Verulam. At Llyn-din, the Lake Fort, to give London its early name, were collected the skins, the lumps of tin, and the slave girls, exchanged for the products of Gaul. Many of the old halls of companies clustering in the neighbourhood testified centuries afterwai-ds to the connection of the spot with the city's trade.

Dowgate hill was famous in later days for the floods which used to pour down it after heavy rains. Old historians used to tell of a boy who was killed by being carried down the stream in a rainstorm.