[Illustration: THE QUARRY AND THE BRIDGE.]
Lastrea and athyrium, their foliage gone, cling in silky russet knobs
under the granite ledges, warm the iron-grey stone with brown and agate
brightness, and promise many a beauty of unfolding frond when spring
shall come again. For their jewels will be unfolding presently, to
soften the cleft granite with misty green and bring the vernal time to
these silent cliffs.
The quarry lies like a gash in the slope of the hills. To the dizzy
edges of it creep heather and the bracken; beneath, upon its precipices,
a stout rowan or two rises, and everywhere Nature has fought and
laboured to hide this wound driven so deep into her mountain-side by
man. A cicatrix of moss and fern and many grasses conceal the scars of
pick and gunpowder; time has weathered the harsh edges of the riven
stone; the depths of the quarry are covered by pools of clear water, for
it is nearly a hundred years since the place yielded its stores.
One great silence is the quarry now--an amphitheatre of peace and quiet
hemmed by the broken abutments of granite, and opening upon the
hillside. The heather extends over wide, dun spaces to a blue distance,
where evening lies dim upon the plains beneath; round about a minor
music of dripping water tinkles from the sides of the quarry; a current
of air brushes the pools and for a moment frets their pale surfaces;
the dead rushes murmur and then are silent; here and there, along the
steps and steep places flash the white scuts of the rabbits. A pebble is
dislodged by one of them, and, falling to the water beneath, sets rings
of light widening out upon it and raises a little sound.
In the midst, casting its jagged shadow upon the water, springs a great,
ancient crane from which long threads of iron still stretch round about
to the cliffs. It stands stoutly yet and marks the meaning of all around
it.
At time of twilight it is good to be here, for then one may measure the
profundity of such peace and contrast this matrix of vanished granite
with the scene of its present disposal; one may drink from this cup all
the mystery that fills a deserted theatre of man's work and feel that
loneliness which only human ruins tell; and then one may open the eye of
the mind upon another vision, and suffer the ear of imagination to throb
with its full-toned roar.
For hence came London Bridge; the mighty masses of granite riven from
this solitude span Thames.
Away in the heath and winding onward by many a curve may yet be traced
the first railroad in the West Country. It started here, upon the
frontier hills of Dartmoor, and sank mile upon mile to the valleys
beneath. But of granite were wrought the lines, and over them ran
ponderous wagons. Many thousand feet of stone were first cut for the
railway, before those greater masses destined for London set forth upon
it to their destination.
Like the empty quarry this deserted railway now lies silent, and the
place of its passing on the hills and through the forest beneath is at
peace again. From the Moor the tramway drops into the woods of Yarner,
and here, between a heathery hillside and the fringes of the forest, the
broken track may still be found, its semi-grooved lengths of granite
scattered and clad in emerald moss, where once the great wheels were
wont to grind it. The line passes under interlacing boughs of beeches
and winds this way and that, like a grey snake, through the copper
brightness of the fallen leaves; it turns and twists, dropping ever, and
ceases at last at the mouth of a little canal in the valley, where
barges waited of old to carry the stone to the sea.
Here also is stagnation now, but picturesque wrecks of the ancient boats
may still be seen at Teigngrace in the forgotten waterway. They lie
foundered upon the canal with bulging sides and broken ribs. Their
shapes are outlined in grasses and flowers; sallows leap silvery from
the old bulwarks and alders find foothold there; briar and kingcups
flourish upon their decay; moss and ferns conceal their wounds; in
summer purple spires of loosestrife man their water-logged decks, and
the vole swims to and from his hidden nest therein.
Here came the Hey Tor granite, after dropping twelve hundred feet from
the Moor above. Leaving the great wains, it was shipped upon the Stover
Canal and despatched down the estuary of Teign to Teignmouth, whence
larger vessels bore it away to London for its final purpose.
It came to supersede that bridge of houses familiar in the old pictures,
the bridge that was a street; the bridge that in its turn had taken the
place of older bridges built with wood: those mediaeval structures that
perished each in turn by flood or fire.
It was in 1756 that the Corporation of London obtained an order to
rebuild London Bridge; but things must have moved slowly, for not until
fifty years later was the announcement made of a new bridge to pass from
Bankside, Southwark, to Queen Street, Cheapside. The public was invited
to invest in the enterprise, and doubtless proved willing enough to do
so. The ancient structure, long a danger to the navigation of the river,
vanished, and in 1825, with great pomp and ceremony, the
foundation-stone of the "New London Bridge" sank to its place. A recent
writer in _The Academy_ has given a graphic picture of the event, and
described the immense significance attached to the occasion. From the
earliest dawn of that June morning, London flocked to waterside and
thronged each point of vantage. Before noon the roofs of Fishmongers'
Hall, of St. Saviour's Church, and every building that offered a glimpse
of the ceremony were crowded; the river was alive with craft of all
descriptions; the cofferdam for the erection of the first pier served
the purpose of a private enclosure, where notable folk sat in four tiers
of galleries under flags and awnings.
At four o'clock, by which time the great company must have been weary of
waiting, two six-pounder guns at the Old Swan Stairs announced the
approach of the Civic and State authorities. The City Marshal, the
Bargemasters, the Watermen, the members of the Royal Society, the
Goldsmiths, the Under-Sheriffs, the Lord Mayor and the Duke of York
appeared.
"His Lordship, who was in full robes," so says an eye-witness of the
event, "offered the chair to his Royal Highness, which was positively
declined on his part. The Mayor, therefore, seated himself; the Lady
Mayoress, with her daughters in elegant dresses, sat near his Lordship,
accompanied by two fine-looking, intelligent boys, her sons; near them
were the two lovely daughters of Lord Suffolk, and many other
fashionable ladies."
Then followed the ceremony. Coins in a cut-glass bottle were placed
beneath a copper plate, and upon them descended a mighty block of
Dartmoor granite. "The City sword and mace were placed upon it
crossways, the foundation of the new bridge was declared to be laid, the
music struck up 'God save the King,' and three times three excessive
cheers broke forth from the company, the guns of the Honourable
Artillery Company on the Old Swan Wharf fired a salute, and every face
wore smiles of gratulation. Three cheers were afterwards given for the
Duke of York, three for Old England, and three for the architect, Mr.
Rennie."
Then did a journalist with imagination dance a hornpipe upon the
foundation-stone--for England would not take its pleasure sadly on that
great day--and subsequently many ladies stood upon it, and "departed
with the satisfaction of being enabled to relate an achievement
honourable to their feelings!"
And still the noble bridge remains, though the delicate feet that rested
on its foundation-stone have all tripped to the shades. The bridge
remains, and its five simple spans--the central one of a hundred and
fifty-two feet--make a startling contrast with the nineteen little
arches and huge pedestals of the ancient structure. New London Bridge
is more than a thousand feet long; its width is fifty-six feet; its
height, above low water, sixty feet. The central piers are twenty-four
feet thick, and the voussoirs of the central arch four feet nine inches
deep at the crown and nine feet at the springing. The foundations lie
twenty-nine feet, six inches beneath low water; the exterior stones are
all of granite; while the interior mass of the fabric came half from
Bramley Fall and half from Derbyshire.
More than seven years did London Bridge take a-building, and it was
opened in 1831. The total costs were something under a million and a
half of money--less than is needed for a modern battleship.
And already, before it is one hundred years old, there comes a cry that
London's heart finds this great artery too small for the stream of life
that flows for ever upon it. One may hope, however, that when the
necessity arrives, this notable bridge will not be spoiled, but another
created hard by, if needs must, to fulfil the demands of traffic.
Perhaps a second tunnel may solve the problem, since metropolitan man is
turning so rapidly into a mole.
From quarry to bridge is a far cry, yet he who has seen both may dream
sometimes among the dripping ferns, silent cliff-faces and unruffled
pools, of the city's roar and riot and the ceaseless thunder of man's
march from dawn till even; while there--in the full throb and hurtle of
London town, swept this way and that amid the multitudes that traverse
Thames--it is pleasant to glimpse, through the reek and storm, the
cradle of this city-stained granite, lying silent at peace in the
far-away West Country.