d into a medical hospital for wounded seamen. Its
income is about $750,000 yearly. The Greenwich Observatory, besides
being the centre whence longitude is reckoned, is also charged with the
regulation of time throughout the kingdom.

[Illustration: LONDON, FROM GREENWICH PARK.]

The Thames, which at London Bridge is eight hundred feet wide, becomes
one thousand feet wide at Greenwich, and then it pursues its crooked
course between uninteresting shores past Woolwich dockyard, where it is
a quarter of a mile wide, and on to Gravesend, where the width is half a
mile; then it broadens into an estuary which is eighteen miles wide at
the mouth. Almost the only thing that relieves the dull prospect along
the lower Thames is Shooter's Hill, behind Woolwich, which rises four
hundred and twelve feet. Gravesend, twenty-six miles below London Bridge
by the river, is the outer boundary of the port of London, and is the
head-quarters of the Royal Thames Yacht Club. Its long piers are the
first landing-place of foreign vessels. Gravesend is the head-quarters
for shrimps, its fishermen taking them in vast numbers and London
consuming a prodigious quantity. This fishing and custom-house town, for
it is a combination of both, has its streets filled with "tea-and
shrimp-houses."

TILBURY FORT.

On the opposite bank of the Thames is Tilbury Fort, the noted fortress
that commands the navigation of the river and protects the entrance to
London. It dates from Charles II.'s time, fright from De Ruyter's Dutch
incursion up the Thames in 1667 having led the government to convert
Henry VIII.'s blockhouse that stood there into a strong fortification.
It was to Tilbury that Queen Elizabeth went when she defied the Spanish
Armada. Leicester put a bridge of boats across the river to obstruct the
passage, and gathered an army of eighteen thousand men on shore. Here
the queen made her bold speech of defiance, in which she said she knew
she had the body of but a weak and feeble woman, but she also had the
heart and stomach of a king, and rather than her realm should be invaded
and dishonor grow by her, she herself would take up arms. She had then,
all told, one hundred and thirty thousand soldiers and one hundred and
eighty-one war-vessels, but the elements conquered the "Invincible
Armada," barely one-third of it getting back to Spain.

Thus we have traced England's famous river from its source in the
Cotswolds until it falls into the North Sea