rong place. John, Richard's brother,
who tried to get the throne for himself while Richard was away fighting
in the Holy Land, knew that the stronger he could make the Tower the
better, for if he could hold it he would be King in London, and no one
could seize him and punish him. We shall hear something more about John
later. The moat was made when Richard was away in the Holy Land.

When we draw near we see the White Tower standing up above all the rest.
To cross the moat we have to go over a bridge, once a drawbridge--that
is, a bridge which could be drawn up and let down again as the people in
the Tower liked.

Close by the drawbridge was, until just before Queen Victoria's reign, a
place where lions and tigers and all sorts of wild animals lived. It
seems curious they should have been kept there, where they could not
have had any room to wander about, and when they were moved to the
Zoological Gardens it must have been much better for them. The animals
were here through the reigns of all the kings and queens of England,
from Henry I. to Queen Victoria. If we go to the front of the Tower,
which faces the river, we shall see a fine sight. There is the splendid
Tower Bridge that we read of before; there is the gray, glittering
river; and there are many ships and barges floating up and down on the
water.

Underneath our feet is a deep channel, now dry, where the river once ran
in to fill up the moat. It flowed under a great gloomy archway with a
gate, and when the river was running here everyone who came to the
Tower by water had to land at that gate. It has an awful name, and some
of the very saddest memories belong to it. It is called Traitor's Gate.
In those old days, when people used their river much more than we do
now, they owned barges, great boats covered with an awning, and when
they wanted to go from Westminster to the Tower they did not think of
driving, for the streets were narrow and badly paved, the roads between
London and Westminster quite dangerous; and they could not go by train,
for no one had ever imagined anything so wonderful as a train, so they
went by water.

When the prisoners who were in the Tower had to be tried before judges
they were taken up the river in barges to Westminster, where all the
evidence was heard, and then they were brought back again. How many of
them made that last sad journey and entered the Traitor's Gate never to
come out again! They had been to Westminster to be tried