We pass, on our way down, Waterloo Bridge, Charing Cross Bridge, with its huge railroad trains thundering over our heads, bound to Dover, with passengers for the Continent; Westminster Bridge and the Houses of Parliament, with their gilt vanes, towers, and battlements glistening in the sun; Lambeth Bridge and Lambeth Palace, the residence of the Primate of England, with its gardens and red brick towers; St. Thomas Hospitals, in process of construction; Millbank Penitentiary, a gloomy, six-sided fortress of crime; Vauxhall Bridge; Pimlico Pier, where we stop a moment; the Nine Elms Road, Chelsea Bridge, and Chelsea Hospital, where a number of frisky, one-legged and one-armed veterans are disporting themselves on its smooth, grassy lawn; the Botanic Garden on the right, and the green fields and trees and silvery lake of Battersea Park on the left; Albert Bridge, Cadogan Pier, Chelsea Pier, Battersea Bridge, and the Cremorne Gardens, with its kiosks, captive balloon, statues, shady walks, fountains, and flower beds; and now we are opposite Fulham and Brompton, where the splendid and extravagant Formosas of the metropolis enjoy their ill-gotten gains in pleasant villas and cozy little houses.
We are now getting away from the thickly populated districts of London, and the bridges that cross the river are fewer and farther between, and, being generally of wood, are more rickety.
During the entire passage we are continually stopped by small craft of all kinds. The river is alive with them.
ON THE TOWING PATH.
There are huge yawls, of broad bottom and clumsy construction, containing family parties, with their provender—bread, cheese, and beer, ham pies, and beef pies, kidneys and tongues—spread out in the bottom of the boats on white cloths or in open baskets; there are long shells with crews of eight and four, carrying coxswains; single sculls, double sculls, wherries, watermen's boats, small steam launches, lighters, watermen's barges, small sloops and schooners with dirty sails and unseemly rudders, pleasure yachts, and craft of such queer shape and rig as are never seen on our American rivers.
All are bent on pleasure, and in many of the boats they are singing the slang songs of the London streets; and now and then are warbled the cheering chants of the boatmen immortalized by Dibdin and Taylor, the water poets. A couple of miles more and we are in sight of Putney Bridge, which towers aloft, rickety, worn, and decayed, thousands crossing to and fro on its frail planks to get positions for the race.
And now the full grandeur of a sight such as is seldom or ever seen bursts upon every one on board the Press boat, and even the Londoners admit, in an easy way, that the Derby Day is eclipsed by the great number of people who line the banks of the river for miles on the Surrey and Middlesex shores.
To the left, above the old bridge, is the village of Putney, with its narrow streets and noisome lanes, its green fields, festering pools, eccentric-looking mansions and houses of an humbler kind, the steeples of St. John's and St. Mary's, with their quaint clock-towers; and to the left, on the Middlesex bank, are Fulham and the Bishop of London's palace, the long grass on the Bishop's lawn waving in the breeze, and upon whose surface were stretched pic-nickers eating and drinking.
The Star and Garter at Putney, a famous hostelry, where the crew of Harvard had lodged when they first came to England, was covered all over its surface toward the river with the flags of America and England. The old wooden balconies were crowded with ladies wearing favors in their bosoms; the passages and lanes leading to the towing-path on the river swarmed with foot passengers, all having one determination and one sole object. The "Bell Inn," a rival to the Star and Garter, was also glorious with colors, and all the house-owners for miles along the river had let their windows and seats on their roofs for various sums, varying from five shillings to five guineas per head.
One generous American "lady" had advertised in the Times that she would let seats in her windows to her countrymen at the modest price of two guineas per head, and she found that she had not half room enough for her compatriots. An innkeeper on the towing-path had let the front of his house for £40 to a speculator, who realized a profit of £25 on the venture. The Leander Boat-house, belonging to a well-known boating club, had a scaffolding erected fronting the river for the members and their ladies, which was covered with Union Jack bunting, the structure being the place where the Oxford crew had housed their race-boat.