The river once
kept out--although the cliff receded again--the marsh became dry land,
but, in fact, the cliff receded a very little way, and the slopes of
the streets north of Thames Street show exactly how far it went back.
Many hundreds of years later precisely the same course was adopted for
the rescue of Wapping from the marsh in which it stood. They built a
strong river wall, and Wapping grew up on and behind that wall, just
exactly as London itself had done long before.
The citizens of London had, from a very early time, their two ports of
Billingsgate and Queenhithe, both of them still ports. They had also
their communication with the south by means of a ferry, which ran from
the place now called the Old Swan Stairs to a port or dock on the
Surrey side, still existing, afterwards called St. Mary of the Ferry,
or St. Mary Overies. The City became rapidly populous and full of
trade and wealth. Vast numbers of ships came yearly, bringing
merchandise, and taking away what the country had to export. Tacitus,
writing in the year 61, says that the City then was full of merchants
and their wares. It is also certain that the Londoners, who have
always been a pugnacious and a valiant folk, already showed that side
of their character, for we learn that, shortly before the landing of
Julius Caesar, they had a great battle in the Middlesex Forest with the
people of Verulam, now St Albans.
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