The houses were cleaned and whitewashed, the streets were cleansed, and large fires were lit to burn up any rubbish that might still hold infection. St. Paul's Cathedral was cleaned out, and the beds that the patients had used were burned, and all seemed better.

Then happened another terrifying thing, even more alarming than the plague to the unfortunate people who lived in London at that time. One night, when everyone had gone to bed, the church bells in the city began tolling, and soon feet were heard hurrying on the streets; cries of alarm woke even the laziest, and everyone hurried out to see what was the matter. Against the darkened evening sky they saw a lurid colour like a crimson flag, and this changed and waved as columns of smoke passed in front of it; there was no doubt that a big fire had been lighted somewhere.

At first some may have thought this was only one of the bonfires that the police had lighted to burn up the rubbish, but they soon found it was much worse than that. Whole streets were on fire and burning, and, worse than all, a strong wind was blowing the flames right over London.

The houses then were nearly all of wood, and, being old, were very dry. They burned splendidly; no man could have made a better bonfire. The flames seemed alive; they leaped from one to the other, they licked up the woodwork on the gable fronts, they danced into the windows and in at the doors—no one could stop them or save the houses once they had been touched. The great red demon Fire licked up house after house as if he swallowed them with his great red mouth, and the more he ate the more he wanted; his appetite grew larger instead of less. There were only old fire-engines, not like those we have to-day, and water was very scarce, and at first the people stood terrified, staring stupidly, and then began to run away. It was not for some time that the authorities thought of pulling down some houses so as to make a gap over which the great red flames could not leap. But it is not easy work to pull down houses, and before it could be done the flames leaped on again and again and drove them back. At first the poor people whose houses had caught fire threw their furniture and goods into the streets to save them. But they very soon saw this was no use; the flames got them just the same, for there was no time to carry the goods away, and what the flames did not get thieves in the crowd seized and ran away with.

Now the wind seemed fairly to get hold of the fire, and drove it on with a roar like a steam-engine; the shrieks of people in the streets were drowned by the crash of the burning timbers as the roofs fell in. The heat was so great that some persons, pressed too near to the fire by the crowd, covered their scorched faces with their hands and screamed aloud. Everywhere was confusion and running to and fro, and yet no one could do anything to stop those terrible flames. When a big brewery was attacked by the fire, men rushed in and pulled out the casks into the street, and then, forgetting the perils of the plague and of the fire, drank until they reeled about the streets, and some even fell into the flames and were burnt.

The place where the fire began was not far from London Bridge, and the red light reflected in the water lit the city up with an awful glare. Some of the people in the houses which were then standing on the bridge got into boats, and, without heeding the awful heat and the showers of smuts, rowed away up the river to a safer place.

The churches began to go soon, and when one was fairly caught its high spire was seen to quiver for a moment as if it were in pain, and then topple right over with a crash. The dangers were increased by the falling of such great masses of stone. The whole of that night the flames roared on, and devoured everything in their course. Even those whose houses were at the west end began to tremble. King Charles II. himself had now come back to London, and when he was told of the great danger that threatened his city, he was the first to go to help and to suggest that houses must be pulled down to stop the flames. This was very difficult, because the houses to be pulled down had to be a long way in front of the fire, or there would not have been time to get them down before the fire reached them. And when the people to whom they belonged were told that they must come out because their houses were to be destroyed, they very naturally objected, and said they were quite sure the fire would never get so far as that; and, anyway, why should their houses be pulled down and not others?

The fire had begun first in a poor quarter, but it soon came on to the houses of wealthy merchants, and then a strange sight was seen: these men, hastily gathering up their gold and silver, their rich bales of stuff and merchandise, hurried westward, and the streets were filled with carts and men laden with goods jostling, pushing, and hurrying in both directions. At the end of that day the fire still burned as if it would never stop; surely never before had there been such a bonfire. Not a single person in London could go to bed. How did he know that he might not be awakened by the flames leaping in at his windows? No, everyone was in the streets, either watching or talking or shouting, and very few did any good or knew what to do; they mostly got in the way of others who were trying to stop the flames.

When that second awful night was past, the day dawned; but there was little light, for a great cloud of black smoke hung over everything, blotting out the sun. On the river were boats and barges and vessels of all sorts laden with goods; in the streets the same weary, excited crowd.

Out in the fields there were tents put up for the people whose houses had been destroyed, and numbers of people camped there, crying and bemoaning their losses; many of them had lost all they possessed in the world, and had no clothes and sometimes no food.

At last it was seen that the flames must reach St. Paul's Cathedral, and even those who were most careless held their breath at the thought of the destruction of so splendid a building. At that time St. Paul's was being repaired, and the scaffolding round the walls served as fuel for the flames, which leaped upon it and got such hold of it that the very stones became red hot. The roof and the tower of the cathedral were a blaze of fire; soon the lead with which the roof was covered began to melt, and ran down in golden rain from every gutter into the street below. You have perhaps seen in fireworks showers of golden rain, but that was harmless; this was real boiling lead, and if it had struck anyone would have scorched him up. Streaming as it did from that great height, it came down with force, and set everything that it fell on in a blaze. The flames got inside the cathedral, and roared upwards through the staircases as through so many funnels, and then it was seen that the fall of the roof was inevitable. It came at last with a tremendous crash, and showers of sparks shot upwards, lighting up the country for miles around.

For the whole of the next day the flames continued, and on into the day after that; and then the wind fell, and the fire burnt with less fury. By this time, too, people had pulled down houses, and made great gaps which could not be bridged over by the flames, and so the Great Fire ceased.

A most curious thing was that the fire had begun in the house of a baker in Pudding Lane, and the part where it was finally stopped was at Pye Corner, near Smithfield. It was very odd that both these names should have had to do with eating. No one knows how it began, but the general idea is that a servant-girl who was drying some sheets let them fall into the fire, and then, seeing them flame up, was afraid, and thrust them into the chimney; so the chimney caught fire, and the house, which was very dry and built of wood, flamed up, and the fire spread. But other people say it was done on purpose by a man throwing a light into the house window.

Close to the spot where it began was put up later a tall monument, a great column, which is hollow inside, with a staircase to the top, and anyone may go up by paying threepence; and on the summit there is a little platform, which is caged in to prevent people from falling or flinging themselves over. From here there is a fine view of London; you can see the river, and the ships going up and down, and the bridges, and the tall steeples of all the churches built by Sir Christopher Wren for the new London that rose out of the ashes of the old.

At the place where the fire is said to have stopped there is the figure of a funny little fat boy put up, and that you can see at Smithfield if you care to go there.

The greater part of London was completely wiped out; the streets were all gone—none knew even where their own houses had stood; there were heaps of ashes everywhere, so hot that the boots of those who walked over them were scorched. For long afterwards, when the workmen were opening a pile to take away the rubbish and begin to build a new house, flames which had been smouldering below burst out again. The great task of rebuilding the city demanded all the energy and sense of which the people were capable. There were many quarrels, of course, between people who claimed more land than they ought to have had, and between others who were both quite sure their houses had stood on one spot. It was a long time before a new London was built. But though the fire cost the Londoners many millions of pounds, and though it ruined many persons and caused fearful loss, it was really a blessing, for it burnt away things that might have carried the plague infection; and it burnt the old unwholesome dirty wooden houses, and in their place were built better houses and wider streets, and health and comfort were greater.



BOOK III

THE SIGHTS OF LONDON



CHAPTER XVIII

THE TOWER OF LONDON

If anyone were staying in London for the first time, what do you suppose he or she would want to see most? It would depend on the character and age of that person. If it were a boy, he would be almost sure to say the Zoological Gardens. A girl might choose Madame Tussaud's. But besides these there are many other things that could be chosen—St. Paul's Cathedral; the British Museum; Westminster Abbey. Also places of entertainment, like Maskelyne's Mysteries, where there is conjuring so wonderful that, having seen it no one can believe the sight of his own eyes. At Christmas time many of the large shops turn themselves into shows, with all sorts of attractive sights to be enjoyed free, so that people may be brought into the shop and possibly buy something. All these things are attractive. But there is one thing not yet mentioned, which is the best of all, and interesting to both boys and girls alike, as well as to men and women. This is the Tower of London.

I am now going to imagine that you are staying with me on a visit, and every day we will do something enjoyable, and go to see something fresh. We could go on for days and days doing this in London, and not come to the end of the sights. But the first thing to see, the very first, ought to be the Tower, because it is one of the few old buildings left in London, and there are so many stories connected with it they would make a big fat book in themselves.

On the first morning of your visit to London you would get up in a rather excited frame of mind, and be anxious to start off at once. That would be as well, because if we are to go to the Tower it will take us a long time to get there.

Before the west end of London was built the Tower was in the important part of London. All that could then be called London clustered round it. In those days, when the country was unsettled and enemies appeared suddenly outside a town, and might burn and destroy houses, and steal all that they could lay hands on, it was necessary to have a wall all round the city. This wall was very strong and high, and could be defended by men with spears and arrows. It ran right round the city on three sides, and on the fourth was the river.

In the reign of William the Conqueror there was no strong castle or palace for the King in London, but only an old fortress on one side of this wall, the east side, quite near to the river. This fortress had stood there for a long time. No one knew when it had been built. King William ordered it to be pulled down, and in its place he caused a strong castle to be built. Part of the city wall was pulled down to make room for this castle, and so began the Tower of London.

If we, living in the West End, want to get to the Tower, we must take an omnibus or train and go right through the City until, at the place where the City and the East End meet, we shall find the Tower.

It is a very fine building, with a great square tower in the middle. Round it are the gardens, and round the gardens, again, there is another line of buildings, which have smaller towers set here and there upon them at intervals. Circling round the outermost walls is a huge, deep ditch, as big and broad as a river. This was once a moat full of water. The water from the Thames ran into it and filled it, and it formed a strong barrier of defence for the Tower, and attacking forces would have found it a difficult matter to swim across that water with the archers and soldiers shooting down from the walls above, with flights of arrows as thick as flights of pigeons. And, of course, the enemies would never have been allowed to put a boat on the water, for the archers would have shot them while they were doing it. In old times the kings who lived here must have felt very safe with their huge thick stone walls and the great rolling stream of gray water all round. The windows were made very small, so that arrows could not get into them easily to wound the people inside the rooms, and the staircases were of stone, very narrow, and they wound round and round up into one of the towers. They were made so because then, if ever the enemies did manage to get inside the Tower and tramped upstairs, they would find that only one, or perhaps two, of them could get up the steps together to fight, and the men who were guarding the tower could keep them back for a long time. As I said also, the gardens are inside the Tower, so the people who lived there could walk safely in them surrounded by the great gloomy high stone walls.



Oh, how many stories that Tower has to tell! Every stone of it must have heard something interesting. But saddest of all must have been the groans and cries of sorrowful prisoners, for besides being the King's palace, as I have told you, it was also a prison. That seems very odd to us now. Fancy if we made part of Buckingham Palace, where the King lives, into a gaol! But in old times palaces and prisons were often in one building, partly because it was necessary for both to be very strong and to resist force, and it was not easy to build two strong buildings in one place, so they made one do for both. When William the Conqueror died he had not finished his building, and William Rufus, his son, went on with it. Rufus finished the square building in the middle, which has four little corner towers, and this is called the White Tower, not that it is white at all, though it may have been when first built. Now it has been blackened by many centuries of smoke. It was not until the reign of Richard Coeur de Lion that the moat was made, and by that time the Tower had grown very much, and was a strong place. John, Richard's brother, who tried to get the throne for himself while Richard was away fighting in the Holy Land, knew that the stronger he could make the Tower the better, for if he could hold it he would be King in London, and no one could seize him and punish him. We shall hear something more about John later. The moat was made when Richard was away in the Holy Land.

When we draw near we see the White Tower standing up above all the rest. To cross the moat we have to go over a bridge, once a drawbridge—that is, a bridge which could be drawn up and let down again as the people in the Tower liked.

Close by the drawbridge was, until just before Queen Victoria's reign, a place where lions and tigers and all sorts of wild animals lived. It seems curious they should have been kept there, where they could not have had any room to wander about, and when they were moved to the Zoological Gardens it must have been much better for them. The animals were here through the reigns of all the kings and queens of England, from Henry I. to Queen Victoria. If we go to the front of the Tower, which faces the river, we shall see a fine sight. There is the splendid Tower Bridge that we read of before; there is the gray, glittering river; and there are many ships and barges floating up and down on the water.

Underneath our feet is a deep channel, now dry, where the river once ran in to fill up the moat. It flowed under a great gloomy archway with a gate, and when the river was running here everyone who came to the Tower by water had to land at that gate. It has an awful name, and some of the very saddest memories belong to it. It is called Traitor's Gate. In those old days, when people used their river much more than we do now, they owned barges, great boats covered with an awning, and when they wanted to go from Westminster to the Tower they did not think of driving, for the streets were narrow and badly paved, the roads between London and Westminster quite dangerous; and they could not go by train, for no one had ever imagined anything so wonderful as a train, so they went by water.

When the prisoners who were in the Tower had to be tried before judges they were taken up the river in barges to Westminster, where all the evidence was heard, and then they were brought back again. How many of them made that last sad journey and entered the Traitor's Gate never to come out again! They had been to Westminster to be tried, feeling quite sure something would happen in their favour, and they would be set free; and then they had heard the sentence that they were to be beheaded! They came back down the river, and the sunshine might be just as gay, the water as sparkling, as when they went, but to them it would all seem different. The journey was short, too short for a man who knew it was his last! Then when they reached the Tower the barge would sail on up to the Traitor's Gate, and the dark shadow of the heavy walls would fall on the prisoner, and he would feel a chill at his heart as he stepped out on to those cold gray stones.

Of some of those who suffered in the Tower you have heard. Sir Thomas More landed here when he came in his barge from Chelsea, but we know that he was too brave and good to feel much fear. Lady Jane Grey landed here when her father and father-in-law brought her here, calling her Queen; she came as a queen, but stayed here afterwards as a prisoner. Did any warning tell her this when she stepped out of the boat?

Queen Elizabeth came here, too, when she was only a princess. Her sister Mary was on the throne, and Mary feared that people would make Elizabeth queen, so she sent her as a prisoner to the Tower. We know the very words Elizabeth said as she landed, though nearly three hundred and fifty years have passed since then. She exclaimed: 'Here landeth as true a subject, being a prisoner, as ever landed on these stairs, and before Thee, O God, I speak it, having none other friends but Thee.' Then she sat down on a stone, and said: 'Better sit on a stone than in a cell.' And only the entreaties of her attendant moved her to get up and go on. She was a prisoner for several years, and at first was not allowed to go out of her cell at all. Afterwards, when she became Queen on Mary's death, one of the first places she visited was the Tower, perhaps because she felt pleased at being a Queen instead of a prisoner, and wanted to enjoy the contrast.

There were many, many others who landed here, never to come forth again as free men. Some died in imprisonment; some were beheaded; some suffered for their crimes; some were innocent, but suffered because they had aroused the anger of a jealous king. Some went into those walls to suffer tortures worse than death—tortures of the thumbscrew and rack, to make them betray the names of their companions. Some came here as martyrs, because they believed in God, and thought the suffering of the present time as nothing to the glory hereafter.

Having looked long at the Traitor's Gate, we can pass on into the Tower and see what else is there.

The prisoners went sometimes from the Traitor's Gate to the Bloody Tower, so called from the fact that it was in a room here Edward V. and his brother were murdered by the order of their wicked uncle. The boys' bones were afterwards found at the foot of a staircase in the White Tower. The Bloody Tower was not always called this awful name; it used to be known at first as the Garden Tower. In the Bloody Tower the Duke of Northumberland, who tried to make Lady Jane Grey a queen, was imprisoned before he was beheaded. He must have known he well deserved his fate; but if he had any conscience he must often have felt very miserable to think of Lady Jane and her young husband, his own son, who would be likely to suffer for his fault too.

Very soon the dark walls beheld another prisoner, Archbishop Cranmer, a martyr in Queen Mary's reign. Cranmer was not a strong man by nature, and the long wearing imprisonment tried him so much that at last he gave in to his enemies, and said he would renounce his faith. He thought then he would be released; but no, he heard that he was to be burned all the same. We can imagine the horror of the poor prisoner, who had denied his religion and yet not saved his life. He realized then how weak he had been, and, like St. Peter, no doubt he wept bitterly. However, when the day came, and he was taken to Oxford to be burnt, he had recovered all his strength of mind. He declared himself firmly a Protestant, and when the faggots were stacked up round him and the fire lit, he held one arm, his right arm, into the flames, saying it should burn first, as it had signed his denial. He held it there until it was all burned away, and died the death of a brave martyr.

Another well-known man was imprisoned in the Bloody Tower after Cranmer. This was Sir Walter Raleigh, who, as a handsome, gay young man, had attracted great favour from Queen Elizabeth. It is said that one day when she was going to cross a puddle Raleigh sprang forward and flung a beautiful cloak he was wearing over the mud as a carpet for her feet. The cloak was very rich and handsome, as were the cloaks the nobles wore then. Of course it was spoilt, and Elizabeth was much flattered by the courtesy of the young man. She made him a knight, and he was raised to great honour. He sailed across the seas and discovered new lands, and he brought back tobacco and introduced smoking into England. When the Spaniards attacked England, the gay and gallant Sir Walter fought valiantly, and came back covered with honour and glory. No man could have had a brighter life, no man could have risen higher. And then came his downfall. He was accused of plotting against King James, who had succeeded Queen Elizabeth. He was condemned to death and sent to the Tower. There seems to be no reason to believe that Raleigh was guilty, but, guilty or innocent, he spent fourteen years in the Tower. He was not the kind of man to sit idle, so he set to work and wrote a book on the history of the world, which kept him occupied, and showed that he was clever as well as gay and daring. Then once more he was let out for a short time while he sailed to the West to discover a gold-mine of which someone had told him. King James, who always wanted money, had let him go on giving his promise he would come back. Raleigh did not find the gold-mine, but he was a man of his word. He came back, though he knew the terrible prison and perhaps the block and axe were waiting for him. He was beheaded in Whitehall, where King James's own son was so soon after to be beheaded too. Raleigh's long imprisonment must have been dreadful to a man full of life and energy. Yet he had compensations: he was allowed to walk in the garden, and his history must always have been a solace to him.

There were many others imprisoned in the Bloody Tower; but we must pass on.

In walking from one part of the Tower to another we meet some men dressed very curiously in red dresses with velvet caps. These are the Beef-eaters, who guard the Tower, also called the Yeomen of the Guard. Their odd name and odd dress always attract people, and they are such fine men that children sometimes wonder if they are called Beef-eaters because they eat a lot of beef! That is not so. The name is said to come from an old French word buffetier, which means a man who waited at a buffet or sideboard; and in old times the beef-eaters waited on the King and Queen, and they still wear the same costume they wore three hundred years ago. Every night before midnight the chief Beef-eater goes to find the chief warder; the Beef-eater carries the keys of the Tower, and with a guard of men the two go together to lock up the outer gate. When the sentinel who keeps watch hears them, he calls out, 'Who goes there?' and the answer is, 'The Keys!' Then says the sentinel, 'Advance, King George's Keys!' This is a curious old custom. Close by the Bloody Tower is the Jewel House, where the crowns of the King and Queen and other royalties are kept. They are made of gold and set with precious stones, so big that it is difficult to believe that they are real—great rubies and pearls as large as pigeon's eggs, and huge glittering diamonds. In this room there is a man always on watch, day and night. Yet the jewels were once stolen by a daring man called Colonel Blood, who managed to get away from the Tower, but was caught soon after with the King's crown under his cloak. This was in the reign of Charles II.

In the White Tower are rooms full of armour worn by English soldiers—armour of all the different ages, from the time when a man wore so much iron that if he fell down he could not get up again, and sometimes was actually smothered before he could get out of it, up to the present day.

In the White Tower there is one very awful dungeon, a little narrow cell, without a ray of light, no window at all—nothing but dense blackness. There must have been many prisoners kept here, for on the walls there are sad cuttings, now half worn away, which tell how the poor men occupied their time in chipping their names in the stone. Many of the martyrs of Queen Mary's reign must have felt this terrible blackness, for there are texts of which the dates show that they were cut at that time. One of these is, 'Be faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life.' The hand that traced out these letters long years ago is still. The martyr has long since passed from the darkness of the narrow cell to the great brightness of eternal light.

The torture instruments are shown in the White Tower too, and many of these brave martyrs felt the torture before they reached the light. The rack was very commonly used. On it men—yes, and women too—were sometimes stretched as on a bed; their wrists were tied with cords above their heads, and their ankles with cords to the other end of the rack. Then a man turned a handle, and the hands and feet were slowly drawn in opposite directions. The poor wretch might shriek and scream, or he might turn as white as death and let never a sound escape him; but it was all the same: the rack moved on. There was a doctor there to feel the victim's heart and say when he could bear no more without dying. And then, when that happened, perhaps he fainted with the agony and was released, and carried away to be allowed to recover a little, only to be brought back another day. Sometimes he would bear it bravely enough the first time, but at the second time his courage would give way, and he would cry out and say he would do whatever it was his persecutors wanted, perhaps change his religion, perhaps reveal the names of his companions in a plot. There were other tortures, too—a kind of iron cage, called the Scavenger's Daughter, with a collar of iron to fasten round a man's neck and irons round his arms and legs, which cramped him up in an awful position, in which he was left for hours, until every bone ached as if it were red-hot. The thumbscrew was a little thing, but caused great agony. It was fixed on to anyone's thumb, and then made tighter and tighter, until sometimes the wretched victim fainted away. Another way that people were tortured was by being hung up by their thumbs, so that the whole weight of their bodies rested on the cords. In this position they were left for hours together.

There is a very beautiful chapel in the White Tower which we must certainly see. Outside in the garden, opposite to another chapel, called St. Peter ad Vincula, is the execution ground, where so many people were beheaded. But I think this is enough for one chapter, and we will learn something more about the Tower in the next.



CHAPTER XIX

THE TOWER OF LONDON—continued

Nearly all the people condemned to be beheaded at the Tower were executed on Tower Hill, which lies outside the walls; only a few who were of royal birth or especially favoured were beheaded inside the walls, where they could not be seen by the great multitude. And the plot of ground outside the chapel is the place where these favoured few were killed. We can stand now on the spot where gentle Lady Jane Grey laid her little head on the block. She was not the first near the throne to have been executed here. Two of the Queens of the bloodthirsty Henry VIII. had died at the same place—Anne Boleyn and Katherine Howard. Both these Queens had been received here by Henry in great state before their marriages, and little had they thought when they arrived and were greeted with guns firing and flags flying that very soon the bell would be tolling for their death. It is difficult to believe in the cold-heartedness of a man like Henry. Anne Boleyn was a bright, gay little woman; she was the mother of Queen Elizabeth, and she had done nothing whatever to merit death. But Henry had seen someone else he wanted to marry, so he ordered his wife to be beheaded. It is said that he waited under a great tree on a height in Richmond Park, some miles away, to see a rocket fired up from the Tower, which was to announce the death of Anne, and to let him know he could marry Jane Seymour. Anne had only been his wife three years when he tired of her, and she was twenty-nine when she was executed. Four years later the King married Katherine Howard, having had two wives—Jane Seymour and Anne of Cleves—in between. Poor Katherine was Queen only for two years, when she followed Anne to the block.

The handsome and gallant Earl of Essex, who had been a favourite of Queen Elizabeth's, also suffered here. He had lost the Queen's favour, and, after having been one of the principal men at the Court, was treated with coldness and disdain. Essex's proud temper could not endure this, and he made plots against the Queen, one of which was to kidnap her and carry her off as his prisoner. Elizabeth heard of this, and sent her soldiers to seize him. Essex had then a house in the Strand, near St. Clement's Church, and he barricaded his house and defied the Queen's soldiers. Nothing could have been more mad. Elizabeth was furious when she heard it. Cannon were placed on the tower of St. Clement's Church, and from there they were fired at the house of the reckless Earl, who was at last forced to submit. He was tried, found guilty of high treason, and condemned to death. But all the time Elizabeth, who must still have cared for the high-spirited Essex, felt sure that he would not really be killed; for long years before she had given him a ring, and told him that whenever he was in great need he had only to send that ring to her, and she would help him. So she expected to receive the ring from him, and was very slow in signing his death-warrant; but the ring never came, so she signed the warrant, and then she recalled it. Yet still there was no sign from Essex. Elizabeth began to grow uneasy, and thought perhaps that the Earl was too proud to ask help from her when he had defied her. Well, if that were so, she could do nothing to save him, for she was a queen, and was too proud to give help where it was not asked for; so she signed the death-warrant a second time. Meantime, Essex was in the Tower, and he had remembered the ring and the Queen's promise; he had been rebellious and he was very proud, but now that he was going to die in the full strength of his manhood it did not seem too hard a thing to do to ask a favour from Elizabeth, who had been so kind to him and was his Queen. After all, he had behaved very badly, and he knew it, and it was right to ask pardon. Perhaps this was what he thought, and he gave the ring to the Countess of Nottingham to take to the Queen. But the Countess of Nottingham did not want the Earl to live; she was jealous of his influence over Elizabeth, and she thought that if she kept back the token Essex would surely die.

So the time slipped away, and Elizabeth in her palace and Essex in his prison both thought bitterly of each other. The execution drew very near, and at last one day in February Essex was brought out to die. Perhaps he thought up to the last minute that a messenger would ride up carrying a pardon from the Queen; but no, no one came, and at last he laid his head on the block, and perished thinking hard things of his Queen. Not long after the Countess of Nottingham herself fell ill, and on her deathbed confessed to Elizabeth the wicked thing she had done. The knowledge that Essex had died believing her to have been faithless to her word so enraged the Queen that she said to the dying Countess: 'May God forgive you, for I never can!'

Many people spent most of their lives in the Tower. We have heard of Sir Walter Raleigh, who was here for fourteen years; but there were others imprisoned much longer. One man, a Duke of Orleans, afterwards King of France, was here for twenty-five years; and Lord Courtenay, son of the Earl of Exeter, who was of the Royal Family and descended from Edward IV., was kept in the Tower almost his whole life for fear that he might lay claim to the crown.

When the King or Queen of England used the Tower as a palace, the part they occupied was quite distinct from the prison. This part is now the Governor's house, and the Governor, who is called the Lieutenant of the Tower, lives in it. Here there are many splendid rooms, including a great council-room, where the King and his nobles used to meet for consultation. Underneath the house is a room where Lord Nithsdale was imprisoned, and the story of his escape from the Tower is one of the most exciting in all history.

In the reign of George I. a nobleman called the Earl of Nithsdale had joined in a plot to restore the Stuarts to the throne. You will remember that after the reign of James II. people said that Prince James was not his son at all, but a baby which had been adopted by the King, who had no son of his own; and as this was generally believed, after the King had been driven into exile, his daughters, the Princesses Mary and Anne, came to the throne and reigned one after the other. When they died the English crown was offered to a distant cousin, who was George I. But many English noblemen and gentlemen said that this was unfair, and that the son of James II. and his son after him should have been King. We can never tell now which was right; but all this caused a great deal of unhappiness and much fighting. Those who took up the cause of the Stuarts were called Jacobites, and among this number was the Earl of Nithsdale. He was taken prisoner, and condemned by King George to die with several others, and he was sent to the Tower, there to wait his fate.

But he had a beautiful and determined wife, who was resolved to save his life. It was in the winter time, and, of course, there were then no trains to carry people swiftly and comfortably through the frosty air. So she started on her journey from Scotland on horseback, and rode as far as Newcastle; but she was not a great horse-woman, and being wearied with her exertions, she there took a coach and proceeded to York, taking with her her faithful maid Evans. But when they got to York they found that so much snow had fallen that the coach could not go on to London at all. Now, all this time the days were passing, and every day that passed made Lord Nithsdale's execution nearer. His poor wife was in a terrible state of suspense; but she did not sit down and despair. She said that if there were no coach then must she ride to London. And so she did—rode about one hundred and eighty miles through all the snow, which was often up to her horse's girths, and at times she thought she would not be able to get through after all. But at last she did, and when she arrived in London her husband was still alive. Never thinking of herself or of her own weariness, Lady Nithsdale went to the Court, and used all the influence she possessed to get King George I. to pardon her husband. But he was an obstinate, cruel little man, and he refused even to hear her, though she flung herself before him and caught at his coat.

Then she saw that there was nothing for it but to help her husband to escape out of that gloomy Tower. She therefore begged permission to go to see him. At first even this was refused her, but she gave the guards money, and at last they let her into the Tower. What a meeting that must have been, and how cheered the husband must have been to think of the strong love that had made his wife do so much for his sake!

But they had little time to talk about what was past, for they had to arrange for the future. Brave Lady Nithsdale formed a plan, but to carry it out it was necessary to get the help of two other women. She found one in a Mrs. Mills, in whose house she was lodging, and after some difficulty she found another, a friend of Mrs. Mills, called Mrs. Morgan. Now, by this time it was the day before that fixed for Lord Nithsdale's execution, and everything depended on getting him out of the Tower at once. Lady Nithsdale told her companions of her plan, which was to make her husband walk out boldly through the guards dressed like a woman; and for this end she made Mrs. Morgan, who was a little fair, slim woman, wear two sets of clothes one over the other, and one set she meant that Lord Nithsdale should wear. Mrs. Mills was a big, stout woman, with fair eyebrows and fair hair, and Lady Nithsdale hoped that when her husband came through dressed in woman's clothes the guards would think he was Mrs. Mills. When they arrived at the Tower, the poor wife got out and asked to be allowed to take a friend in to say farewell to her husband, and she was told she might take one lady in at a time. Accordingly, she and the thin Mrs. Morgan went in, and while they were in the cell where Lord Nithsdale was, Mrs. Morgan took off the extra clothes she had brought and left them for him to put on. Then she hurried back and told Mrs. Mills to come in. Lady Nithsdale ran to meet Mrs. Mills, who pretended to cry very much, and kept her handkerchief up to her face; and when she got into the cell they waited a little while and talked, for they hoped the gaolers, having seen some ladies passing backwards and forwards, would now forget how many had gone into the cell. After a time Mrs. Mills went out again, and Lady Nithsdale kept calling after her to tell her that she wanted her maid, and that the maid must come quickly, and then she went back again to her husband. She had painted his dark eyebrows fair, and she had put rouge on his cheeks and dressed him up in her own petticoats and the clothes Mrs. Morgan had left; and she had told him not to stride like a man, but to take little mincing steps, so that the guards should not notice any difference. But there was one thing she could not hide, and that was his beard, and she had no time to cut it off; so she tucked it into his cloak in front, and told him to keep his head down and hold his handkerchief to his face and pretend to be crying bitterly. It was now getting dusky, and she was afraid that if they waited any longer the gaolers would bring candles and see what was being done. How the hearts of both husband and wife must have been beating when they opened the door and stepped forth into the anteroom where the guards were! Lady Nithsdale talked a good deal rather loudly, and said she could not understand why her maid had not come, and that she must come at once; and she begged her husband, whom she called 'Mrs. Betty,' to run down to her lodgings to see if the maid were there and send her to the prison. And when they got to the outer door she let him go, and ran back to the cell herself. Then she talked again as if she were talking to her husband, so that the gaolers should hear, and made answers for him in a deep man's voice. Brave heart! she must have been well-nigh fainting with terror, and expecting to hear every minute a noise which would tell her she had been discovered. But after a time, when all seemed right, and when she could talk no more, she left the cell very slowly, and, shutting the door behind her, said to the gaolers that they need not take in lights until Lord Nithsdale asked for them, for he was praying, and did not wish to be disturbed. Then she went down to her coach.

And he really did get safely away; and the King was furious, and said Lady Nithsdale had given him more trouble than any woman in Europe. But Lady Nithsdale went and waited at a friend's house until she heard where her husband was in hiding in a little poor house, and then she joined him, and they stayed there together until things could be arranged for him to get over to France. A friend brought them a bottle of wine and some bread, and on this they lived from Thursday to Saturday. But I do not expect they cared much what they ate, they must have been so happy to be together again.

It was very seldom indeed anyone had escaped from the Tower. Once a man tried to, and let himself down by a rope from his window; but the rope broke, and he fell headlong and was killed. The countess's plan was much better. Luckily, she and her husband had good friends, and one of them lent Lord Nithsdale the livery of his servant, and, pretending he was a footman, took him to Dover, where he got a boat and managed to cross over to France in safety. His estates were all taken from him, but that was a little thing when he had saved his life. His devoted wife joined him in Rome, and they lived abroad for the rest of their days.

Guy Fawkes, of whom we heard before, was examined in the King's house in the Tower, and the judges tried to make him give up the names of his companions; but villain as he was, Guy Fawkes was no coward, and he refused to turn traitor. Finding that he was obdurate, the judges decreed that he should suffer the torture of the rack, and accordingly he was racked again and again. At last in his agony he cried out that he would tell the history of the conspiracy, but not reveal the names of his fellow-conspirators. This was not enough. Once again he was brought to suffer the awful torture, and this time his gaolers told him that some of his comrades had been already taken, and were in the hands of the police. So Fawkes gave way and made a full confession, which was signed 'Guido Fawkes,' and is still kept. This was in November, and on the last day of the following January he and three of his associates were executed at Westminster.

They were brought from the Tower to be executed, and Guy Fawkes was so weak and ill from the terrible tortures he had suffered that he could scarcely climb up the scaffold.

In other parts of the Tower numbers of men and women were imprisoned, but we might as well write a history of England as tell all their stories here. In one tower there is the word 'Jane,' cut in the wall by Lady Jane Grey's husband, the young Lord Dudley, and on many of the walls are names and records cut by sorrowful men and women almost without hope.

It is all changed now. No longer sobs and cries and executions are here, but only the voices of soldiers drilling or calling out to one another, the voices of little children at play on the wharf by the river, or of visitors who come to see the place. The soldiers are in barracks in the Tower, and they drill in the bottom of the deep moat, which is now quite dry.

If we pass from the Tower we shall find outside Tower Hill, where by far the greater number of executions took place. It is just a wide, open space, paved like a street or market-place, and many people walk over it every day without giving a thought to all that has happened there in bygone times.



CHAPTER XX

THE ZOOLOGICAL GARDENS

If you go to the Zoological Gardens you ought to be a good walker and not easily tired. The animals are in cages, but they are not all close together; there are long stretches of green grass and trees and beautiful flower-beds between, and to go over the Zoo thoroughly takes a very long time. But it is not likely that any of you would want to know it thoroughly; the things you want most to look at are not the curious rare small animals or different sorts of birds, but the largest and best-known animals, such as the lions and tigers, the bears, elephants, and giraffes. Of all these the lions are the most interesting.

If we arrive at the Zoo a little before four o'clock in the afternoon we ought to go straight to the lion-house, for four o'clock is the lions' dinner-time. The house is light and warm, and the cages are all down one side in a row. Behind them are the railed-in gardens belonging to the beasts; but sometimes the doors between are shut, and the lions are not allowed to walk in their gardens. On fine sunny days, however, we can see them there outside, licking their great lips and rolling about lazily on the warm ground. In the lion house about ten minutes to four all the great animals begin to get restless; they walk up and down and whine or howl, and as four o'clock draws near they get more and more excited, some of them going round and round in circles, always quicker and quicker. Though they have no watches, they know the time exactly, which is rather wonderful, for there is nothing to tell them four o'clock is near. This is their one meal in the day, so no wonder they look forward to it; and when you see what they get, it doesn't seem much for such a great big animal as a lion. Soon a rumbling sound is heard, and a little truck laden with raw meat runs up through a little passage between the cages, and the keeper pushes it along the front of the cages to the end. Then the animals get frantic; the sight of the raw meat makes them savage; they leap and howl—great howls that would make your blood run cold if you heard them on a dark night when you were out in the forest. The animal that goes round in circles goes so fast he nearly tumbles on his head, and the others trot backwards and forwards, and all is noise and confusion. The keeper undoes a bar at the bottom of the cage, which leaves just enough room to put the meat in; then he picks out the piece he means for that animal and thrusts it through at the end of an iron rod. The lion or tiger pounces on it, and growling, carries it into a corner of its den. The keeper replaces the bar, and goes on to the next one, and so on until all are fed. Then a deep silence follows; there is only a licking of great lips, a sort of purring of content, and a sound of bones being crunched or scraped, and we can look at the animals more easily than when they are running about. Here in front is a magnificent lion, with a great tawny mane; his broad nose is wrinkled as he crunches his bone. He has torn all the meat off it almost at once, and his rough tongue has licked it clean until it is quite polished; but he still goes on chewing it with those huge white teeth as long as your finger—teeth that would crunch through your arm in a moment. This old fellow is usually good-tempered for a lion, but when feeding-time comes his wife Mrs. Lioness has to go into the back den shut off by a little door to eat her dinner alone, or they would fight. Suddenly Mr. Lion raises his head and looks round grandly, as if he were ashamed of all those people who come to stare at him. He was a king in his own country, and now, alas! he is only a captive king. Perhaps he sees a woman carrying a little baby in her arms, and he fixes his eyes on that baby until it is out of sight. What a delicious morsel it would make for dessert! But he knows he cannot get through his bars; he learnt that long ago when he was first brought here. He was not born in the Zoo—oh no; he had been caught when he was full grown. He remembers quite well the wild, free life, where, if he were not sure of a dinner every day, at least every now and then he got more than he could eat. While he licks his bone he is in a quiet mood, and if you listened very hard you might hear him talking.

'Yes,' he says (Lick, lick), 'that bone was very good, but there wasn't enough on it, and now I'm not going to get any more until to-morrow. Oh, those stupid humans, how they do stare! Have they never seen a gentleman eat his dinner before? They would open those silly round eyes a bit wider if these bars were not between us. I wish they could have seen me that day we caught the zebra. It was grand that!' (Lick, lick.) 'I had hunted all one night without getting even the whisk of a tail; and also during the day in the glaring, hot African sun, when I wanted to go to sleep; and I was very hungry. We, I and my wife, lay down in the shade a little while towards evening before we parted to see what we could pick up. There were the little ones to be considered, for when they had come running up and seen me with nothing, all their little tails dropped down, and you never saw such a set of little cats in your life. I told them I would bring them something next time for certain; and so I set off alone, as I said before, in the evening.

'The sun had burnt up all the grass, which was a kind of dusty brick-red colour; but that's not a bad thing for a lion, because he doesn't show against it. It was a very wide open plain where I was, with just a few shrubs and odd bits of tree for shelter. Well, I crouched down under one of these, trying to make myself as small as I could, and praying that the still air wouldn't send the smell of me over the plain to warn all those silly creatures I wanted to catch.

'Presently I smelt zebra. Now, good tender zebra makes a dish fit for a king, but the brute can trot at such a rate that I knew I shouldn't have a chance to catch him running. I must hide and leap out. The smell got stronger and stronger, and then I saw them half a mile off, a whole herd, galloping just as straight as they could come towards my hiding-place. I grew hot and cold then, I can tell you, and my tail quivered so I was afraid they would see it. I was in fine condition, and I reckoned that at the distance they would pass I could just by a very long spring land on the back of the leader. But then they might at any moment scent me, and I should be done for; up with their heels, and nothing more of supper should I see but a cloud of dust. So I waited, and they came right on. I shook with excitement. Then, just at the right moment, I gathered myself up, and with a great spring I cleared the distance and landed clean on the back of the leader. That was a surprise for him, I can tell you. He went down as if he had been shot, and the others, with snorts of terror, flew away like the wind. One stroke of my paw killed him, and then I stood up over his striped and quivering body and roared as loud as I could for my wife and little ones. They weren't far off, and they came as fast as they could; and to see those little beggars dancing about that zebra was a sight, almost as good a feeling it gave me as when I landed on that zebra's back. It had been a record jump that. We measured it afterwards in strides, and my wife said she was proud of me, and she always knew I could jump better than any other lion in South Africa.

'Well, those little beggars jumped on that zebra, and bit at him; but the skin was too tough for their little teeth, bless them! It was the funniest sight. But when the old woman and I started in, we did more than that, I can tell you; we tore off great chunks of him, and the little ones ate what they could. They got in the way, too, and we had to give them a slap now and then to keep them in order; and they snarled and swore at each other until their mother had to quiet them. When we had done we felt as if we could hardly walk, and we just wanted to get home as fast as we could and do no more that night. We had pretty well finished up that zebra before we walked off, and the vultures came hopping round to clean up what we had left. I was feeling all right then, and we lay down comfortable and satisfied. Oh dear! I had quite forgotten where I was; and now I wake up to find myself in this dull place, where there is no hunting and no fun, where we are caged up in horrid bars.'

Just as the lion finished speaking, Mrs. Lioness came out from the inner den. She was not nearly so handsome as her husband, and he thought her not nearly so handsome as his first wife, who had hunted with him in South Africa; still, she was company, and that was something.

We have stayed a long time at this lions' cage, and we must pass over all the rest of the lions—some of them born in captivity, who have never known the delight of a wild, free life—and go on to the great striped Bengal tiger, with his magnificent head and handsome face. There is not the same tremendous strength in his appearance as in the lion's, but there is something almost more terrible in his long, gliding body and catlike movements, more ferocious altogether. In the wild state the lion prefers to prey upon animals, and will not turn on man unless he is desperate. But a tiger sometimes takes to the life of a man-eater for no reason but because he likes the taste of human flesh; and once he has begun to eat human beings, he is a man-eater to the end of his days. He turns man-eater sometimes, too, when he is old and his strong teeth fail; and then he will hang about outside villages to pounce on a soft-flesh man, who is easier to catch than a wild animal.

Tigers are very fierce; a mother tiger with her cubs will attack anything. When the cubs are little she teaches them to hunt for themselves, taking them out with her on expeditions and showing them how to catch smaller animals, such as young calves or pigs, until they are strong enough to hunt larger ones, when they leave her and begin housekeeping on their own account. A great many tigers live in India, and many a wretched native has ended his life by being caught by one of them. You would think, to look at the royal tiger, with his reddish markings and black stripes, that he could be easily seen at a great distance, but this is not so. In the jungle where he lives the stems of the bamboos are light, and the markings of the tiger are so like his surroundings that you might get quite close to him and never know it. He walks through the dense thick jungle with the loose, springy step of a cat, and woe be to any luckless animal he sees! Sometimes he will find an enclosure with some young bullocks in it; then he will take one, and leave the others, for, unless he is a very young tiger, he does not kill for the love of it, but for food. He carries off his prey, and comes back a night or two after for a second one; and if the owner of the bullocks does not remove them he will soon have none left.

Quite near to the lion house, on the other side, is the reptile house, where live snakes, crocodiles, and lizards, and all sorts of curious animals. The most interesting are the enormous snakes, called boa-constrictors, with bodies nearly as thick as a child's, and many yards in length. They are not in cages, but in glass houses, like glass boxes. The glass is very thick and strong, and the snake does not dash himself against it to get out. He would not take the trouble to do that, for he moves slowly, and when you see him at the Zoo you would think him very lazy. There he lies, with his oily body, covered with little scales, hanging round the branch of a dead tree which has been put into his house, or perhaps lying coiled up on the gravel floor in rings and rings, so beautifully neat that you wonder how he can take the trouble to fold himself up so nicely before he goes to sleep. He certainly would not get crumpled if he lay anyhow, as your clothes would get crumpled if you did not fold them up. Watch him very closely. You can see he breathes, and perhaps he glances up and winks with one eye, or darts out a wicked little tongue. How can a creature like that, so big and so slow, ever get any food? Well, he can go fast enough at times, and he does not often want a meal, because he eats so much at one time that it lasts him for many days. He writhes his great body along the ground in the thick woods of his native country, and lies so still that you might tread on him without seeing him. He lives in Brazil and other parts of South America. Perhaps a young deer comes down to drink, all unconscious of the hideous beast lying in watch. He stoops his pretty head, then, with a writhing movement, the boa is upon him. The deer struggles frantically, but the great folds of the snake close ever tighter and tighter round him with a strength that breaks his delicate bones and squeezes the life out of him. When the animal, crushed and breathless, ceases to struggle, the boa opens his gaping mouth, and bit by bit the whole animal—it may be still palpitating—is forced into that awful throat. The snake cannot tear his prey; he has no hands or feet, no claws or hoofs. He can only swallow it whole. It would seem impossible sometimes that he could get that mass into his comparatively narrow throat; but his muscles are elastic. He stops half-way through his horrid meal and lies still to rest, then another swallow and another. In the meantime, his teeth, like little sharp saws bent backwards, covering all the roof of his mouth as well as the jaws, are firmly fixed into the victim, so that it cannot draw back. When the disgusting meal is done the great snake lies helpless and swollen, and has to wait until his food is digested before he can get about comfortably.

When he is in the Zoo he doesn't get anything so large as a deer, but rabbits and small things that he can swallow easily, and frogs, of which all snakes are very fond, perhaps because they are slimy and slip down quickly. There are many other snakes beside the boa, some not so large, but more poisonous. The boa is not poisonous. He relies on his huge strength to kill his enemies; but other snakes, such as vipers and rattlesnakes, are. Even when the head of a viper has been cut off it still remains poisonous, and may cause death. The rattlesnake is so called because it makes a funny rattle with its tail before it strikes. It is about five feet long sometimes, and the sound of its rattle sends terror into the heart of anyone who is near, as he knows that at any moment the snake may dart out upon him with its hideous head aloft and its wicked eyes gleaming. The rattlesnake is found in North America.

The reptile house has been rebuilt and is very hot and damp, to suit the animals who live there. In the middle there is a large tank with numbers of ugly crocodiles living in it. They are dark greeny-brown, like a log that has been a long time in the water, and if you were floating down the Nile, or any river where crocodiles live, in a boat, and saw something floating that you thought a bit of old wood, it might very likely be the back or head of a crocodile. He has a bony coat like a suit of armour, and it would be very difficult indeed to break through it, and he swims along, using both his strong tail and his flat feet. He is what is called an amphibious animal, because he lives partly on land and partly in the water. He must breathe air, but he can shut up his nostrils by a fold of skin as we shut our eyes, and can remain under the water without breathing for some time. His enormous jaws are like a pair of great shears, and woe be to any animal or man who gets his leg between them. It will be cut off as cleanly as the gardener cuts a tall flower with his shears. The crocodile lives in water, and catches fish and other things; he comes out at times and lies on the banks, and in the evening, when the land animals come down to drink, he hides himself in the water, and catches anything he can with his ugly snout. Fancy a dainty antelope finding suddenly that his delicate nose was pinched tightly by Mr. Crocodile's teeth, and that he was being drawn down, down to a hideous death!

But we have stayed much too long in the reptile house, and have not even mentioned the pretty little green frogs and the many other things to be found there.

On the other side of the lion house, away from the reptiles, is the sea-lions' pond. Sea-lions are not the least little bit like real lions, but when sailors heard them roaring on the rocks far out to sea they thought they must be lions, and so they gained the name. There are several of them at the Zoo, huge clumsy looking creatures with big whiskers, and a skin like india-rubber. At one end of their pond is a mass of artificial rock with caves and terraces, and when the sea-lions are out of the water they gallop about on this in an astonishing way, considering that they have no legs, and only end in a fish's tail. They lollop along on two front flippers and their strong muscular tail, and then plunge off the rocks into the water as quick as a flash of light. Once in the water they seem to be everywhere at once, their movements are so fast and graceful. Diving at one end of the pond, they are up at the other before you have had time to take breath.

The best time to see them is when they are fed, which is after the real lions. The keeper goes into the enclosure with a basket of fish, and in their excitement the sea-lions writhe and wind and chase each other till the pond seems full of gigantic eels. He throws the fish one by one in all directions, and the great beasts simply dance after them. Even after the last fish has gone, still the happy commotion continues for several minutes.

A great change was made in the Zoo when the Mappin terraces were built. These were presented by a Mr. Mappin who wanted the animals to be seen in a more natural state than is possible when they are in cages. The great idea is that the animals are not separated from the sight-seers by bars, but by a very deep and wide ditch, ditch isn't the right word, fosse would be better, but fosse is not a very common word.

Across this, people can look at the bears in safety, and see them far better than under the old conditions; while the bears themselves are in the open air, and have a good space to roam over and a fine pond to bathe in. They are some beautiful shaggy brown bears here, just the very model on which Teddy bears are made; and, if you are kind to them, and throw them bits of biscuits across the fosse, some of them will sit up in the most engaging way and hug their hind feet, rocking themselves backwards and forwards in their excitement about the promised dainty.

High over the bears' open places, rise rocks on which various sorts of chamois and goats live happily. They can climb far above our heads and look down on us, or leap from rock to rock as if they were in their native haunts. I often wonder what they think of the bears running about below them! Sometimes they must watch in surprise as they see the bears chasing each other. There are one or two together in most of the big spaces, and they go through the most absurd antics, plunging in and out of their ponds, and eyeing one another cautiously as they stand with the water running off their fur.

There are a great many other bears too, for whom there is not room on the Mappin terraces. These are in the old bear-quarters, which look rather like two rows of open fronted shops standing back to back. Here are black bears with big yellow or white collars and very smooth coats. They come from Malay, and are not at all like one's ordinary idea of a bear. There are also funny little bears who go head-over-heels to make people look at them. There is an open cage here, too, with a pond in it. Sometimes the grizzlies live here; very fearful they look too, with their terrible claws, as long as fingers. Or there may be a family of young ones romping together.

Bears are to be found in nearly all parts of the world, and they are very different from one another. Bears in their natural state would not attack men, but when men follow them up and try to hunt them they become very savage. There is a bear-pit at the end of the double row of cages, and if we go up on the top and look down we shall see the two brown bears who climb up a pole to get buns.

Now we will go back again to visit the Polar bears who live in a spacious place at the end of the Mappin terraces, and deserve a little more attention than the rest because they are so very different in their appearance and habits.

One day I caught Mr. Polar Bear in a good humour, so that he was actually willing to talk to me. 'It's not so bad here sometimes,' said he. 'The keeper does give us plenty of fish. It isn't so good as seal, though. That's what I like—seal rich and juicy, and almost alive. But it doesn't matter much, after all, for I have no appetite, it's so hot, always hot; my great thick coat makes me feel abominably warm. The only comfortable place is the bath, and that's lukewarm. Cold, do you call it? Oh, you don't know what cold is—real keen, cutting cold, which makes one feel young again and ready for anything. Oh for those long blue Arctic nights, when the sun never rises for days together, and the stars flash like diamonds, and the aurora shoots over the gleaming sky!—nights when everything is still, held in the grip of a frost greater than you can imagine; where for miles and miles there is only the glittering ice reflecting the flashing sky and the deep blue shadows under hillocks of frozen snow. Then it's worth while to live. Shall I ever see it again? My wife used to say before she died that she didn't know what was the matter with me, I had grown so cross; I only growled at her. But I knew what was the matter with me. I can't breathe here, it's all so stuffy and dull—no excitement. You've never caught a seal in your life? Then you don't know what excitement is. You just try, and then come and tell me if it isn't the best sport in the world. These seals—silly things!—make holes in the ice, and come up to breathe now and then; and these holes are regular traps. Right down below the ice-cold water lies fathoms deep, still and dark, and we cannot get the silly things there; but here in the ice is a nice little round hole. I have been walking with great long silent strides over the beautiful frosty snow, and I come on one of these, and lie down beside it, hiding myself. I have to be very still; the slightest movement would send Mr. Seal far away. When I have waited there hour after hour, perhaps I hear a faint sound in the water, a little ripple, so faint that anyone not used to it would never notice it; and then I feel thrills all over me. By-and-by the silly round head of the seal peers out, all glistening with the wet. I am lying behind a hummock of snow—we call them hummocks there—and he looks all round, and finally drags himself up on to the ice; then with a bound I am on him. But there is only time for one try—he is as quick as lightning, I can assure you—and if I miss him, he's into that hole and down, down, down for ever, and there's my supper gone too. But if I get him, what a juicy feast, what masses of soft flesh and oily fat, what tearing and rending! Ah, the taste of seal!'

He licked his lips, was silent suddenly; then, with a great growl, turned away. He had remembered where he was, poor fellow, and that the joys of seal-hunting would never be his any more!



CHAPTER XXI

THE ZOOLOGICAL GARDENS—continued

We are now not far from the monkey house, where there are great cages the height of a room, with bars filled in by wire to prevent the monkeys from getting their little hands through to snatch, for if ever any saying was justified it is that one, 'as mischievous as a monkey'; yet, in spite of the bars, mischief is sometimes done. Stand near with a hat trimmed with flowers, and you will not have to wait long to prove it. That large monkey who has been sitting in a corner very quietly spies the brilliant flowers. He begins to move slowly and stealthily; then, with a sudden wild spring, almost before you realize what has happened, he has grabbed the bright flowers, torn them out, and danced back to the very highest corner of his cage, where, jabbering with delight, he picks the petals off one by one, and lets them float down to the ground. He is big, so none of the others dare take his prize from him; but woe betide any little monkey who finds such a treasure. He darts off with it, and then begins a wild race right across the cage; one monkey after another joins in, leaping in the air from one swinging rope to another, and springing up the bars of the cage. The little monkey jumps, catches a rope, drops to the ground, and springs at another rope. Now he is in a corner, the others have him; but no, with a dive and a wriggle he has slipped through them, and is chattering and grimacing on the other side of the cage.

Feed one of them with nuts, a little wrinkled black hand is put out to receive them; if you touch it, you will feel it cold and clammy. The little black palm holds the nuts for a second, and then the monkey crams them into its cheek, which makes a sort of pouch, and, retiring to the top of the cage, cracks them one by one, throwing down the shells just as a boy would do. They are very human the monkeys; you cannot help feeling all the time they know a great deal more than they pretend. Have you ever looked into a monkey's eyes? If not, do so the next time you have the chance; they are the saddest eyes on earth—just as if the poor little monkey thought a great many things in his small head, but could never express them, and so was very unhappy. There are a large number of monkeys at the Zoo; they are never still, and so funny that they make you laugh outright sometimes. The bigger monkeys, which are called apes, are also very interesting, but are in another house altogether. They have glass in front of their cages. Of all of them the chimpanzees are the most human, and one or two of these are in separate cages, where they are bathed in artificial sunlight all day long to keep them in good health, as they are very delicate.

One of the latest additions to the Zoo is a wonderful Aquarium, where all sorts of strange fishes and sea-creatures can be seen swimming about in natural surroundings, lit from above. From the huge wicked-looking octopuses with their snake-like feelers, to the tiny sea-horses with heads very like those of the knights in chess pieces, there are wonders untold.

On this side of the Gardens there are many things we have not yet seen, but we must leave them and see the big animals, the elephants and rhinoceroses. To reach these, we go through a tunnel and come up on the other side.

The first thing we see here is a row of most brilliantly coloured parrots; I do not suppose you ever saw such colours anywhere else—the brightest reds and blues and greens and oranges, all in the same bird. It seems almost impossible to believe that the feathers really grow like that; it seems as if someone must have taken a big paintbrush and daubed on the colours. If it is warm and fine the parrots are out of doors, each sitting on a perch, and tied by a little thin chain to one leg. What must it be to see them in their own native forests flying about among the green trees? Fancy, if we came across a great bird, as large as the largest doll, brilliantly coloured, flying about in the garden at home! The parrots come from South America, New Zealand, and Australia; so they like hot countries, but they seem to do very well in England, and look quite perky and happy. I will tell you what I think is the reason of this, the parrots are so conceited that they are pleased when people admire them, and they like nothing better than to be at the Zoo, where dozens of people come past every day and say:

'Oh, just look at that one! Did you ever see such a beauty? Look at his scarlet and blue! Now, who would have thought a bird could be like that?'

On dull or cold days the parrots are indoors, and if you go into their house you will hear a tremendous noise. All of them are shrieking and screaming at once. Perhaps suddenly in the midst of all this din you will hear a funny parrot voice saying: 'Thank you, my dear; Polly's quite well,' which will make you jump. When you turn round you will see it is one of the birds who is talking. They cannot all talk, and those who do just know a sentence or two without knowing the sense of it, and say it on all occasions; but very proud they are of the accomplishment. There are dear little green parrakeets, too, who fly about in flocks in Australia, looking like flights of animated green leaves.

Besides parrots there are in the same house toucans, birds who have enormous bills and rather small bodies—in fact, they seem to have spent their time growing bills. The bill, or beak, is like the claw of a lobster, and is rich orange colour. The toucan's eye has bright blue round it, and round that again orange colour. The bird himself is black, but he has tips of scarlet on his costume and a white throat, so he is altogether very grand, and he is so solemn that you think he must imagine himself very superior.

Just beyond the parrot house is a long range of buildings like a large stable, and here are the elephants and other big animals. Perhaps the elephant is out earning his living by walking round the Gardens with a seat on his back, on which anyone can have a ride who likes. He is very gentle and tame, though his enormous height and great swinging trunk make him appear rather fearful.

If he is at home, and we pay him a visit, he coils up his trunk or lifts it over his head, and shows a huge three-cornered mouth, into which, he gently insinuates, he would like you to throw biscuits. There are both Indian and African elephants, and the African are generally the larger.

Elephants as a rule have very good characters, and get fond of their keepers. They are big and gentle; yet in some cases they have suddenly turned savage without any apparent reason. In the wild state they live in dense forests, and unless they were very strong and their hides were very thick they could never get through the trees and shrubs at all; but they force them asunder with their great strength, and snap the long twining plants that hang from tree to tree. Any other animal would be wounded and torn with the spikes and thorns, but the elephant's hide is as strong as a board. He does not mind prickles, and the only sensitive part of him is just behind the ear, so when he is tamed a man sits on his neck, and with a little sharp-pointed spike pricks him behind the ear on the side he wants him to go. It does not hurt, but the elephant feels it and soon understands, and follows the directions as a horse follows the pull of the reins in driving. Elephants live entirely on green food and vegetables, and never want to eat flesh. In their forests they can find plenty of food, and they tear down great branches of rich trees with their long trunks, and then strip the leaves off neatly and put them into their mouths. When the elephant is thirsty he goes to a deep watercourse and drinks, and then, sucking up water in his trunk, he squirts it over his back and sides in a cooling shower-bath.

If you understood elephant language, and came here one evening when the day's work was done and there were no other people about, you might hear the elephants talking.

'Those silly fools of humans!' says the Indian elephant; 'not one of them can throw straight. I can tell you half my time is spent in picking up the bits of biscuit they mean to throw into my mouth and throw somewhere else. I would have a school for teaching them to throw straight if I were in authority. The bits are so little when you get them too—mere atoms.'

'Always thinking about eating,' says the African one, who is a lady. 'Really, I wish they would give you more hay or something to stuff yourself up with. For me, I don't care what I have to eat, but I do long for a little heat and a good plunge in a real river with soft muddy banks instead of my wretched tank sometimes.'

'Ah!' the Indian elephant answers, 'is there anything like it, that plunge after a long, hot, sleepy day, when one has stood about under the trees? I used to have a particular tree I always went and leaned against. It just fitted my side, and I wore the trunk quite smooth. And there I stood all the long, hot day, with sound of the rich forest life in my ears, the buzz and hum of the myriad things that fly and swarm, and the dense leaves kept off the sun; it was dark and hot. Then, when evening came, and it grew a little cooler, we used to join together, all of us who belonged to the same herd, and go down to the water. Then what romping and splashing, what trumpeting and fun! We squirted each other with mud and water, and came out fresh and cool. Ah, those were grand times!'

'You were a fool to get caught,' said the African one rudely, for she had not very good manners. 'How did it happen?'

The Indian elephant looked quite sad, and winked his little eyes as if he thought he should cry. 'It was a terrible story that,' he said, 'and the lesson is, never depend on women. I met one day a handsome elephant in the forest, who seemed to me the nicest I had ever seen. She was not very big, but her ears were particularly large, and hung down so gracefully; and as for her feet, I don't think I've ever seen such beautiful great flat feet on an elephant. Well, I loved her, and she seemed to like me, and we talked together and rubbed trunks, and were very happy, and I forgot where I was quite; and the next thing was I found I was shut in between high palisades, and when I tried to get out the gate was shut. And then men threw ropes over me, and tied my feet to great poles; and the wicked little elephant ran away grinning, for she was a decoy. You've heard of them perhaps—elephants who are tamed by humans, who teach them to be wicked and go out into the forest just in order to trap their own kind and bring them into captivity? It was sad, very sad!'

'But you are happy and contented here as a rule,' said the African.

'Yes, yes, I can't grumble; they are very good to me, and I get some exercise walking about, and as some day I shall grow old, it's as well, perhaps, to be looked after. It's terrible to be old when one lives in the forest; besides, I should feel strange to go back to the old life. I've been here now thirty years.'

'And I twenty. How time does go past!'

All this and much more you might hear if you knew the elephants' language, for they are quite too clever not to have some means of talking to each other.

The rhinoceros is very different. His eyes are wicked, he turns his head from side to side; he would like to stick that horn at the end of his nose into you if he could, and, holding you down with his great flat feet, rummage about inside you with it, and you would not live very long under that treatment. His skin hangs in great thick folds like plates of armour, and is so loose that it looks as if his tailor had fitted him very badly. He is much smaller than the elephant, and his thick-set body shows great strength. He is hideously ugly according to our ideas; but rhinoceros' ideas are different, and he would probably think the smooth pink-and-white skin of a child hideous. He lives in the jungle and eats the leaves of trees, which he tears off with his long upper lip. Some rhinoceroses have two horns on their nose and some only one. You can see both sorts in the Gardens. When the rhinoceros in its wild state has a little calf, as its young one is called, the little one runs along in front of the mother at the sound of any danger, and the mother follows in a wallowing trot behind, so that if necessary her body could guard it from danger. Sometimes hunters shoot rhinoceroses and kill them, and then eat part of them, which they say is very good, just like beef.

After leaving the elephant and rhinoceros house, we pass some sheds and yards, with deer and other animals, and then come to another set of buildings like stables, where there are the hippopotami and giraffes. If you thought the rhinoceros ugly, what will you think of the hippopotamus, with his great shovel-like nose and little ears? He looks like a stupid fat pig, only many, many times larger than the largest pig that ever lived. There are two of these animals in the Gardens now—a lady hippo, born at the Zoo, and about thirty years old, and another, quite a boy yet, only ten or eleven years old, who was born in the Zoological Gardens at Antwerp. Neither of them have known what it is to wallow in the soft mud on the sides of rivers or the joy of living wild and free; they are fat, sleepy, stupid, and contented. There is a tank in their yard at the back, and they are free to walk out as much as they please. Sometimes they lie in the water with only their backs out for a whole afternoon at a time.

The yards of the giraffe are next door, but separated by a high wire fence, so that even the long neck of the giraffe cannot bend over and touch the hippos. Of all animals, the giraffe is, perhaps, the most odd, his neck is so very long, and his markings so rich. He looks as if he had a stiff neck, he holds his head so high, and seems so grand. Giraffes are very delicate animals, and great care must be taken of them. When you think how difficult it must be to bring an animal with a neck like that over the sea and in a railway train to England, it seems wonderful that the Zoo ever owns one at all. Giraffes live on the open plains in Africa, and if they take fright they fly away over the ground with their long legs, covering yards at each stride. If ever a hunter gets near enough to one to throw a rope round him, he may think himself lucky indeed. If a giraffe has been caught like this, the hunters draw him, kicking and struggling, up to a tree, tie him there, and leave him to fight and try to get free for a whole day and a night; sometimes he fights so desperately that he kills himself. However, if he is still alive in the morning, the hunters come and find him exhausted, and they can then take him away without so much danger of being killed by a blow from his great hoof or a swing of his hard head, which he uses to strike with. Once down at the sea, a special place has to be made in the ship so that his long neck may not be cramped; and when landed in England there is a long box-like arrangement fitted on to a compartment of a train, and this can be bent down flat along the roof of the train when it passes under a tunnel. Just think of the many difficulties there are before a giraffe can be transferred from his native plains to England! If you look at a tall giraffe, with his sad, lovely eyes, you will think it cruel that he should be brought into captivity; but, after all, when he is here he is well looked after, and everything is done to make him comfortable. And if he had not been brought here, thousands of people would never have seen one of the most curious animals in the world. The giraffes at the Zoo are continually changing, for though some have been born here, they do not live long, and new ones have to be brought from Africa at great cost.

Not far from the giraffe house are the zebras, with their beautiful black and white stripes, looking like wonderfully marked donkeys. They are very wild and untameable and of uncertain temper; it is best not to go too near them. Well, with the zebras we have finished seeing all the well-known animals of the larger kinds, and so we must say good-bye to the Zoo, perhaps to come again another day.



CHAPTER XXII

THE BRITISH MUSEUM

The British Museum is a very wonderful place, so wonderful that few people understand what they see there. They wander along the corridors looking vaguely at the cases of precious and rare objects on every side; they are impressed by the size of the place, but they do not come to the Museum with the idea of looking for anything particular, and they go away without learning anything. No one man, however clever, could understand about all the things that he will find there; and as for a child appreciating even a small part of the treasures there collected, it is impossible. Supposing a very clever man, who had travelled in many foreign countries, had begun while he was still young to gather together all the valuable and curious things he saw to make a little museum, that would be worth seeing; but probably it would be made up of only certain things that that particular man liked and understood. Now, the British Museum is the museum belonging to the nation, and instead of only certain things being collected, there are curious and valuable things belonging to every kind of study. For instance, if you were studying the different nations or wild tribes of the earth, you would find things belonging to various tribes of people in the Museum; or if you were interested in rare old books, you would find more of them at the Museum than anywhere; or if you wanted to find out anything in any branch of study, you would find clever men at the Museum who would help you.

Sometimes a man who has made a collection of interesting things in his lifetime leaves it to the Museum at his death, or perhaps the Museum buys his collection for the nation; and so every year more and more things are accumulated, until the value of the treasures stored in the great building is greater than anyone could imagine. I expect when you have read all this you will say: 'Then do let us go to the Museum. Even if I don't understand, I'd like to see it.'

So we will go to this solid massive building across the wide space of gravel in front, where the pigeons wheel round our heads and run about on the ground almost under our feet, up the wide, shallow steps under the huge columns into the great entrance-hall. It is all free. The smallest child and the most important man can walk in there alike without anyone's asking questions. As we stand in the entrance-hall there is a wide staircase on one side, and in front of us are swinging glass doors leading by a passage to a great room called the reading-room. To go into this room it is necessary to get permission from the attendants in the hall, who make you sign your name on a piece of paper. Once inside, the size of the vast room almost takes your breath away. There is a great dome ceiling, and the walls are lined with books; there are shelves upon shelves, and thousands and thousands of them. In the middle of the room is a circular desk, where some men are sitting; and round this desk, again, there are shelves lined with huge books, and all these books are filled with nothing but the names of the other books which are kept at the Museum, and which anyone can see by taking certain precautions. People are allowed to walk in just to see the room, by asking in the hall; but if anyone wants to study here he has to write beforehand for a ticket, then he can go in and look in the catalogue (that is what the big books full of names are called) for the book he wants. He writes it on a slip of paper, and puts on the paper also the number of any seat in the room he has chosen. Then he places the piece of paper in a basket and goes away and waits, perhaps twenty minutes, for the books he wants—for he can ask for any number at one time—and presently a man brings them to him.

From the centre desk there are other long lines of desks like the spokes of a wheel stretching out from the middle to the sides of the room, and here numbers of people sit reading all day long. It is very interesting that so many people should work so hard. Look at one of them. He is an old clergyman, gray-haired, and with many wrinkles on his face. He is reading books of sermons so that he can preach next Sunday a sermon made up out of the books. Next to him is a young girl dressed very plainly. She has eyeglasses on, and looks severe. She belongs to an office, and has been sent down here to write out some quotations from a book that cannot be got anywhere else than at the Museum. She earns her living by working for the office, and she likes it very much, and would not change her life with another girl who drives about in a carriage dressed in fifty-guinea frocks, and pays calls on rich people, even if she could. Near her there is a dark-skinned man, a negro. What can he want? Perhaps he is working up to pass an examination. And near him is a worn, tired-looking old fellow, who has gone to sleep over his books. He was well-off once and enjoyed his life, and many people were glad to be invited to his house. But he was foolish and lost all his money, and now he comes up and asks for a few books just as a pretence, so that he can sit there in the warmth and comfort for a little while. There are many authors in the room busy making books, books, still more books, out of those that have been already written. When will it stop?

A copy of every book that is published has to go to the British Museum. The publishers are bound by law to send a copy here, and so hundreds of books pour in continually; there is no end to them. Even in the days of Solomon it was said: 'Of making many books there is no end, and much study is a weariness of the flesh.' But the books that were then written were as nothing to those that have since been written, and every year brings forth more than the one preceding.

You have noticed that round this vast room the walls are covered with books looking gloomy and grey. But these are only a tiny part of the books stored here. If you ask the attendant in charge he will take you behind those walls, where you will think you have stepped straight into a dream-world, for there are passages and passages all lined with books. You might lose yourself, and wander on and on between streets of books higher than your head for many and many an hour. But the storage of books is not the only difficulty the librarian has. He has to keep copies of all the principal newspapers, too. Now, a newspaper in itself is a little thing, small and thin; but when you think of newspapers by the hundred, newspapers by the thousand, going on growing and accumulating, then you can understand how difficult it must be to find room for them all.

Well, we can leave the book-room and go to other parts of the Museum. We can wander down corridors filled with beautiful statues or with mighty, enormous figures, far bigger than you can conceive until you have seen them—figures whose fist is bigger than your whole body, whose fingers are about the size of you, made by the ancient Egyptians, the wonderful people who held the Israelites in captivity—great frowning, mighty figures brought here from across the sea. Or you can go down other corridors lined with many things from savage lands—curious ornaments and boats, and rough skin clothes; or you can see, too, the most interesting part of all, where there are mummies.

In the days long ago, when the land of Egypt was very great and powerful, while England was a lonely little island inhabited by savage men, who knew of nothing beyond their own shores, the Egyptians used to spend much time and money on preserving the bodies of their dead, for they thought that if a man's body were allowed to decay he could never live again in the other world; so when anyone died the body was cut open and filled with rich spices and wrapped in many bandages all steeped in certain ointments. And these things really did preserve the bodies from decay, so that now, two or three thousand years after, we, the English, who have learned to travel and understand many things, go to the land of Egypt, now not great and mighty any more, and pull out the dead bodies of their kings and queens, who lived and loved and reigned when our ancestors were savages, and we bring them back to England and put them in glass cases for everyone to see. There they lie, these people who thought so differently from us, who never knew anything about us, who were rich and powerful, and now are of no consequence. It seems strange, doesn't it? Some are still in the painted wooden cases, into which they fit as into coffins; others have been taken out, and are shown with all the red-brown bandages wound round and round their limbs, and in some cases part of these bandages have been undone and the foot or the leg of a mummied man or woman is visible.

There is not much else here that can be explained in writing, though many things that you would care to see.

At South Kensington there are many large fine buildings, and the finest of them all is the Victoria and Albert Museum, which was opened by King Edward in 1909. It contains all sorts of wonderful and beautiful art work.



CHAPTER XXIII

THE NATURAL HISTORY MUSEUM

The Natural History Museum at South Kensington is a large building, and it is newer than the British Museum and not so gloomy. It is built of different sorts of yellow brick, and has tall towers, and stands among well-kept green lawns. When you go into the hall you see long galleries stretching out on each side. In one there are most beautifully stuffed birds of every sort you could name, and a great many you could not name. All of these are set up in glass cases, with the flowers and grass or bushes round that the birds choose to make their nests in when they are alive. We can see here all the different ways that birds take to hide their nests and young ones. Poor birds! they have so many enemies—the weasel, who sucks their eggs; the cat, who loves to eat their young ones; the birds larger than themselves, who prey upon them; and last, but not least, the cruel boys who destroy the nests 'for fun,' and a poor sort of fun it is.