But as Deptford has lost its importance in our naval system it has become one of the centres of our trade. Facing the river, like the vanished dockyard, and occupying a portion of its former site, is the great collection of buildings known as the Foreign Cattle Market. All cattle landed in London from abroad are brought here to be slaughtered, and in the vast shambles, which no person of nice tastes should think of visiting, beasts are being killed and dressed and quartered from morning to night, with an expedition which strikes the beholder as something unnatural and amazing. From Deptford, it is probable, proceeds the greater portion of London’s meat supply, and even Smithfield gives a less striking idea of the vast capacity of Englishmen for the consumption of animal food than do the Deptford shambles.
Near the point to which we have now come the Ravensbourne enters the Thames, and with it the first black instalment of the sewage of London. The little river rises on Keston Heath, and flows sweetly through a lovely country, wandering, as a poet has sung—
“In Hayes and Bromley, Beckingham Vale
And straggling Lewisham, to where Deptford Bridge
Uprises in obedience to the flood.”
On the bridge stands the boundary stone which marks the extremity of Surrey and the beginning of Kent, and just beyond it, a little nearer to the Thames, are stationed, above ground, one of the sewage pumping stations of the London County Council, and, below, the point of meeting of some of the principal sewers of southeast London.
Before us when we return to the river lies Greenwich Reach, broad and beautiful, uncrowded by shipping, with curious half-wooden houses on our right, with shoals of boats drawn up on the shore with the magnificent front of Greenwich Hospital reflecting itself in the waters. On the high bank above the landing-stage there is an obelisk erected to Belot, the Arctic explorer, unimpressive and meagre enough in itself, but beautiful as a tribute of praise from Englishmen to a daring sailor of another, and, for many centuries, a hostile nation.
At Greenwich we are enjoined to
“Kneel and kiss the consecrated earth.”
It was the hospital which was thus alluded to as the means of consecration, but the glorious building is not a hospital any more. The fine old sea-dogs who used to find shelter here, and narrate to each other the story of their adventures on all the seas of the world, preferred fourteen shillings a week and their pension outside the walls to the liberal rations and the small allowance of money to which they were entitled by their residence indoors; so the place famous to all Englishmen through many generations has become a Royal Naval College, where young officers and engineers are trained in the technical and scientific branches of their work.