_Fish hythe_, in the western part of London, is named in the Saxon charter 718 of Kemble's collection. Riley, in his introduction to the _Liber Custumarum_, which contains a valuable mediæval survey of the wharves, puts Fish hythe near the bottom of Bread Street. _Ebbegate_, which is mentioned in twelfth-century documents, is, Riley says, the same as Swan Wharf.[101] There must, even in Alfred's time, have been some sort of customs house, for there were quay dues, and a charter of 857 speaks of the place in London where the weighing and measuring of the port was done.[102] We thus have a picture of a busy river front, the shore, backed by the city walls and gates, indented with a series of docks crowded with shipping. Says FitzStephen, "To this city from every nation under heaven merchants delight to bring their trade by sea. The Arabian sends gold, ... Gaul her wines." And Robert of Gloucester, characterising the fame of several towns, says, "London for ships most." Camden likens the docks to a floating forest. The principal trade of the port seems to have been in slaves. A law of _c._ 685 relates to the buying of chattels in London-wic, and the traffic is frequently mentioned. Fifty years after the Conquest it was unsafe to go near the ships in Bristol harbour for fear of being kidnapped, as was young Tristram in the story. Gildas, looking back to the commerce of the Roman period, likened the noble rivers Thames and Severn to two arms by which foreign luxuries were of old brought in. In our period a multitude of craft must have filled these basins and lined the river bank--dromonds from the Mediterranean, "long ships and round ships" from the north, and slavers from Rouen and Dublin, with many a splendid war "dragon" like Olaf Tryggvison's--"Foreward on it was a dragon's head, but afterwards a crook fashioned in the end as the tail of a dragon; but either side of the neck and all the stem were overlaid with gold. That ship the King called the Worm, because when the sail was aloft then should that be as the wings of the dragon." The ships of Cnut's English fleet were "wondrously big; he himself had that dragon which was so mickle that it told up sixty benches, and on it were heads gold bedight, but the sails were banded of blue and red and green."[103] There were also pilgrim ships, for we hear that Offa "purchased a piece of land in Flanders in order to build a house where the English pilgrims on landing might find refreshment."[104] According to the legend St. Ursula and her virgins embarked at London. Of Alfred we are told that he built ships to fight the Danish _ashes_, "full twice as large as they, some with sixty oars, some with more." Only last year (1900) a clinker-built boat, thought to be Danish, was found on the Lea, 50 feet long and 9 feet beam. It must have been a wonderful sight when the English fleet assembled at London, as in 992, or when a great host of Northmen sailed up on the tide.