He met Edmund and fought two battles with him; with what result history has made us acquainted. He then returned and resumed the siege of London. Edmund fought him again, and made him once more raise the siege. When Edmund went into Wessex to gather new forces, Cnut began a third siege, in which, also, 'by God's help,' he made no progress. In twenty years, therefore, the City of London was besieged six times, and not once taken. Antiquaries have written a good deal on the colossal nature of the canal constructed by Cnut; they have looked for traces of it in the south of London before it was covered over by houses; they have gone as far afield as Deptford in search of these traces; they have even found them; and to the present day every writer who has mentioned the canal speaks of it and thinks of it with the respect due to a colossal work. Freeman himself called it a 'deep ditch.' How deep it was, how long it was, how broad it was, I am going to explain. It was in the year 1756 that the painstaking historian, William Maitland, F.R.S., announced that he had been so fortunate as to light upon the course of the long-lost trench of King Cnut. He had found certain evidence, he said, of its course, in a direction nearly east and west from the then 'New Dock' of Rotherhithe to the river at the end of Chelsea Reach, through Vauxhall Gardens. The proofs were, first, certain depressions in the ground; next, the discovery of oaken planks and piles driven into the ground for what he thought was the northern fence of the canal, near the Old Kent Road; and next a report that, in 1694, when the wet dock of Rotherhithe was constructed, a quantity of hazel, willow, and other branches were found pointing northward, with stakes to keep them in position, forming a kind of water fence, such as, it is said, is still in use in Denmark. It will be seen that Mr. Maitland's theory has but a small basis of evidence, yet it seems to have been generally accepted--partly, I suppose, because it was so colossal. The canal thus cut would actually be a little over four miles and a half in length. Another writer, seeing the difficulties of so great a work, suggests another course. He would start from the site of the New Dock, Rotherhithe, and end on the other side of London Bridge, a course of only three and three-quarter miles! Let us ask ourselves why it should be a 'deep' ditch; why it should be a long ditch; why it should be a broad ditch.