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THE GROWTH OF THE CITY 53 of London, and the fortifications were kept in order, so that when the Danes overran all the rest of England, the city alone withstood them, and King Athelred owed his safety to the walls. Even a disastrous fire—the first of many—in 982 left the defences intact; and Cnut, in order to get above the bridge, had to make some kind of canal for his shallow boats round Southwark. It re is possible to form some kind fie hee of picture in our minds eye as to what London looked like in times. Suppose those remote that to avoid the Danes round crossed the up, at what is ster. A few stand up from Southwark, we Thames higher now Westminhillocks would the mud flats, ( and it might be Aide to go from Watling Street to the other at anything worse Weshould make possible at low one end of the at Stane Gate Tothill, without than wet feet. our way northand desolate till we reached what is now Hyde Park Corner. Turning eastward, then along the Roman road to Reading, we should cross the Tyburn at Cowford, where afterwards was the Stone Bridge, and later again the uninterrupted line of Piccadilly clubs and palaces. Thence, keeping rather to the north, we should reach the road now called Holborn, from the brook which here makes itself a narrow “hole” through which to flow before it becomes the tidal Fleet. In front of ká
