we get to Australia. We then have the West India Islands to visit; but there, with a cursory survey of South America, and a flying glance at the Levant, we must bring our labours to a close, or, vitally interesting though the subject be just now, we shall not have many who will keep us company to the end.

Of the cotton prospects of Morocco we have very little information. Cotton has been grown there to a moderate quantity and of good medium quality; but to what extent the cultivation is capable of being enlarged, or improved, we cannot say.

Of Tunis we have more definite particulars. Consul Wood reported, in 1859, that the Bey's government was most liberally disposed on the subject, and that a sum of two thousand pounds had been subscribed within the regency itself to prosecute experiments. With this sum, and a grant of a thousand pounds from the Cotton Supply Association of Manchester, between twelve and fifteen hundred acres of land were at once put under cultivation with Egyptian and American seed. The site chosen was in close proximity to the river Mejerda, with a view to easy irrigation. The result was that the Egyptian seed fructified most luxuriantly, and gave strong and healthy plants, which yielded eighty to a hundred and forty "forms or bulbs" each. The cotton from these forms was said to be beautifully white, resembling silk, and of superior quality. The American seed also produced fine healthy plants, and yielded cotton superior to any grown in Morocco. The small quantity sent over fetched eightpence and eightpence-halfpenny per pound in Liverpool; and this, be it remembered, was in 1859.

XX. SENEGAL.

We cannot do better than quote the following extracts from the letter of M. Le Compte to the Cotton Conference, on the resources of the several French possessions, so far as it refers to Senegal:

"In Senegal cotton grows wild everywhere upon the sides of the river. The plant there attains a medium size, lasts many years, grows in the poorest soils, and produces abundantly. No parasite insect blemishes its whiteness, and its sole enemy is the wind of the desert, which carries away to a distance the fibres of the over-ripe bolls; but this inconvenience is only a warning to the cultivators to exercise more care, and gather their crops in time. The cottons of Senegal, of remarkable fineness and great strength, are classed with the medium sorts of America, although considerably shorter." "The quantity of cotton fabrics manufactured in the native looms from St. Louis to Galam, and in the Bondon, is enormous. Indeed, the raw material consumed in this year (1862) cannot be estimated at less than one million of kilogrammes. Without speaking of the Bambouk and the states still desolated by the war, which are able to furnish considerable quantities, there are in Fontatoro and in Walo thousands of hectares of land which await the cultivator, promising to him each year an abundant crop, with no other labour than that of removing weeds, which costs little; for the cottonseed may be sown along with, and in the ground prepared for, mil, without fear of one plant injuring the other. Mil is the principal sustenance of the country, and it is rare that the same field serves two years for that crop in succession. Thus, in process of a few years, the soil would find

itself entirely covered with cotton-trees, which would require only slight attention each year. There are, moreover, the borders of the Cayor, the margins of the numerous salt marigots,' which furrow the environs of St. Louis, which are most suitable to this culture. The long staples would be extremely likely to succeed there; but, without any doubt, it would be possible to obtain from thence hundreds of thousands of bales of fine short staple of the most useful and profitable kind. The government has spared no pains up to the present time to develop this culture in our possessions, and to provide for its complete success in the future." The Senegal producers found themselves suddenly embarrassed by an unexpected dilemma. The large size of the seeds, and the tenacity of the fibre in its adherence to them, baffled all the power of the gins sent out to them-the Saw gin and the Dunlop gin were both found unequal to the work, but the double-acting Macarthy gin was at length introduced, and the cotton cleaned away from the seed.

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The indigenous cotton of Senegal is described to us as useful quality, resembling American in fineness and strength, though rather shorter in fibre."

XXI. -CAPE OF GOOD HOPE.

If cotton do not form an item in the future exports of the Cape of Good Hope, it will not be the fault of the two agricultural societies seated at Grahamstown and Albany, by whom seed has been distributed among the farmers of Lower Albany, Fort Beaufort, Victoria, Kaffraria, and Peddie, from which excellent samples have been raised. We fear, however, that it will never become a field-crop in this colony. It may do very well in gardens and well-sheltered and irrigated places, but the climate of most parts of the Cape is too dry to suit it kindly, and the terrible gales that blow just as the pods are bursting would sadly deteriorate the condition of the fibre. Yet there are districts within the territory of the colony (Natal, it must be remembered, we treated of separately) which suit the somewhat dainty requirements of this exotic (for there is no indigenous kind, as in other parts of Africa; the Eriocephalus produces a substance somewhat similar in appearance to cotton, but without its cohesive qualities, and, if it can be ranked in the same category at all, it must be only as a bastard cotton of low degree); probably the coast district of the eastern province might be profitably employed in its culture, and even more so than in the growth of wheat. For grain crops in this part of the colony are liable to visitations of rust, which attack and destroy all cereals, but pass harmlessly by the cotton-plants. But even there it can only be sown, with any chance of success, in picked neighbourhoods, in the vicinity of the "vleys," or large pools or ponds of water. Cheap labour is not abundant enough to admit of remunerative returns; so that, all things considered, we fear that any flattering anticipation of ever getting a large supply of cotton from the Cape of Good Hope must prove delusive.

The indigenous plant, of which there are two varieties, Eriocephalus Racemosus and E. Africanus, may prove commercially useful (for it is our creed that nothing grows in vain), but never as a substitute for cotton, for the reason we have already mentioned, and also on account of the very small quantity of produce from each plant.

LONDON IN THE WOODS.

AFTER the lapse of nineteen centuries it is not easy to realise the appearance of the country round London when Cæsar advanced upon St. Albans, which at that period he named as "the capital of Cassibelaunus." The word "bel" being understood to signify "a king," the name Cassibelaunus would mean "the king of the Cassi," a tribe that inhabited the part of Hertfordshire now called the hundred of Cashiobury.

The Thames was not yet embanked, and the tide rose over great marshes extending from the Surrey hills to the high ground on the opposite side of the river. The only ford appears to have been at Thorney İsland, which divided the stream, and the passage to this ford is pointed out by the line of the Edgeware-road.

it

On a map this road truly comes from St. Albans, but it does not point towards London; for London is not mentioned by Cæsar, and in his time may have been little more than a village in the woods. Far from this direction, the Edgeware-road points towards Thorney Island and Westminster Abbey, and onward to the Horseferry by Lambeth Palace. It is clear that this is one of those ancient British track-ways many of which were discovered and laid down in maps by Sir Richard Colt Hoare. Two thousand years ago Thorney Island was, in fact, an island. The river was then silting up its ancient bed and forming a new channel, which is the present existing line of the Thames. The old channel may be represented by the ornamental water in St. James's Park; and so late as the time of King Henry III. mention is made, on the Patent Rolls, of a bridge over this channel, about the spot where Whitehall Chapel now stands. Thus the Edgeware-road ran towards this ford, or rather these two fords, first across the Park into Thorney Island, and thence across the present stream by the Horseferry to Lambeth. Afterwards, the road appears to have radiated by various lines into Kent and Surrey.

In his march upon St. Albans, Julius Cæsar avoided the Edgewareroad, though it was more direct than the course which he adopted by Kingston and Harrow. It would have been too dangerous to become entangled in the marshes of the Thames with an enemy in his front and at the mercy of the tide. Therefore he adopted the high ground for his line of march as being the safer.

Where written history affords but a dim and uncertain light, tradition must be accepted as an auxiliary to the historian, and we therefore receive the opinion of the best antiquaries that Cæsar's camp at Wimbledon was occupied by the army on its way towards Kingston. But the deficiency of water would prevent a halt of more than a few hours at that spot. This camp is nearly circular, and was therefore not constructed by the army of Cæsar, but by an earlier people, though it has certainly been occupied by Roman troops at some period, as the remains discovered in the last century plainly attest. This camp closely resembles that early form of entrenchment the Irish Rath, though on an enlarged scale, and may be regarded as the work of the Celts of the Bronze Period. Feb.-VOL. CXXXIII. NO. DXXX.

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The same reasons that induced Cæsar to avoid the marshes of the Thames, and to prefer taking his course over high ground in his advance upon St. Albans, would be equally influential on his return towards the coast. He had experienced a severe check at Kingston, and a defeat would have been fatal to his army, involved as it was among woods and marshes, and in the midst of an enemy's country. Thus his return by the high ground of his advance would be again to cross the river higher up, by Cæsar's camp, at Chertsey, and by the wood near Chertsey, which tradition says the Romans burnt in their retreat, and the charred remains of which are still found underneath the turf. This operation of firing the woods must have been done to check the Britons, and to cover the retiring ranks of the legions. The Edgeware-road presented a short cut by which the British chariots could pursue the Romans, and attack their left flank as they broke up from Chertsey, and retreated towards the coast. The Britons were acquainted with the fords of the Thames, and also with the periods of the tides. By this short cut they could anticipate the enemy, supposing the Romans to be marching towards the east. Thus the statement of the Roman writer, that Cæsar was pursued to the coast, becomes intelligible.

In no English history have we ever seen any explanation why the Romans chose the present site of London for the foundation of an important mercantile city, but in an old French folio, published at Paris in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, a clear explanation is fully given. The French writer says that the Romans built a city on the present spot because it is at the highest point up the river to which trading ships could ascend in those days. It is just below the point at which the river became fordable, and it presented high ground, elevated above the marshes on the east and south. It was also sufficiently remote from the sea to be secure from the fleets of pirates that infested the coasts not only in the Roman times but for centuries afterwards.

When the Roman city of London arose, it began to absorb the population of great cities then existing near it. The indications of the ruins of three great cities are found on the south side of the Thames, and the Roman name of one of them, Noviomagus, is preserved; but the Society of Noviomagians could never discover to which of those cities the name applied. On the north, the population of St. Albans gradually melted away, to the great indignation of the remaining inhabitants, who are said to have threatened to come and destroy the rising city of London; until the Londoners advanced as far as Hampstead Heath, where they entrenched themselves, and prepared to offer battle with their usual valour in defence of their homes. It does not appear, however, that any battle took place, and though the remains of the entrenchment are yet pointed out, the inhabitants of St. Albans submitted to the melancholy process of decay, until their once great city, with its palace and temples, became what it now is-little more than a country village.

Thus, at least, four great cities that subsisted by the agriculture of the country around them were absorbed by the young commercial city that prospered by introducing the new element of foreign trade, in consequence of the policy of the Roman merchants and of their govern

ment.

In the same way that Rome itself absorbed the populations

of the Etruscan cities, whose walls yet remain upon the summits of hills.

A thousand years ago a bishop's palace was not very different from a castle. It was protected by the armed retainers of the episcopate, and the reason for placing the archbishop's palace at Lambeth so close to the ford, appears to have been that the command of the ford should be placed in the hands of a powerful baron, with an armed force, which might prevent tumultuous bodies from crossing from one side of the river to the other. It was thus an advanced guard to the palace of the king at Westminster. The royal palace also commanded this important ford, though not so nearly; and it is not to be supposed that the kings of England would have placed their principal abode among the swamps and fogs of Westminster, unless they did so for some weighty reason of state, when they might have resided on higher and more healthy ground.

These were not the only fortresses appointed to guard this important road. An old writer describes Kingsbury, near the river Brent, as having been the abode and hunting-lodge of the Saxon kings, they having occupied the buildings left by the Romans. The Roman camp is now represented by the churchyard, an oblong which lies between two hollows, north and south, while the eastern side is protected by the river Brent. He also says that there are Roman bricks in the church, which stands in the midst of the churchyard on the spot usually occupied by the general's tent. The process seems intelligible that the Romans chose the strongest military position to command the road, and at the same time to secure a good supply of water from the river Brent and the streams that flowed into it. The camp becoming stationary, the soldiers would build huts for the winter. Many of the country people would come to sell provisions, and others to reside there, until at length, after the conversion of the Emperor Constantine, a small Christian church was built, which remains to this day: the Romans having marched away some fourteen centuries ago to fight the great battle with Attila the Hun, deserting their camp, their buildings, and their church, for the Britons to come and occupy them.

The country in that part was not enclosed at that remote period, nor cleared of forests, as it is at present. These woods were so extensive, that even so late as the reign of Queen Elizabeth the conspirators under Babington could hide for a fortnight in the forests between St. John's Wood and Harrow, and escape detection until compelled by starvation to surrender themselves.

The Roman camp at Brockley Hill, a few miles farther from London, and also commanding the Edgeware-road, is set down on the maps as the station "Sullonicæ," a compound word which signifies "the victory of Sulla," or Sylla. Here we have the name of the general, and the victory that he claimed over the Britons. This is clearly not the Sylla of the Roman history who contended against Marius, for that contest occurred some centuries previous to the Roman occupation of Britain, but most probably it is some unknown general who gained a victory not recorded in history or perhaps, fancied that he had gained one.

The continuation of the Edgeware-road towards the marshes of the Thames is represented, after a slight deflection, by Park-lane, where the