The distance between Crayford and Dartford is but two miles, past White Hill; and all the way are fruit gardens, tramps, and odious little terraces of brick cottages with tiny gardens in front, whose brilliant, old-fashioned flowers--sweet-williams, marigolds, and polyanthuses--put to shame these wretched efforts of the builder. There is, half a mile from Crayford, beside the road, an iron post with the City of London arms and the legend, "Act 24 & 25 Vict. cap. 42," in relief. This wayside pillar marks at once the limits of the London Police District, and the boundary of the area affected by the London Coal and Wine Duties Continuance Act of 1861. The City of London has been entitled from time immemorial to levy dues on all coal entering the metropolis, and this privilege, regulated from time to time, was abolished only in 1889. Two separate duties of twelve pence and one penny per ton were confirmed by this act and authorised to be levied upon coals, culm, and cinders; while the acts dating from 1694, imposing a tax of four shillings per tun on all kinds of wine were at the same time confirmed and renewed, and the radius made identical with the London police jurisdiction, instead of the former limit of twenty miles. These boundary marks were ordered to be set up on turnpike and public roads, beside canals, inland navigations, and railways, and are frequently encountered by the cyclist and pedestrian, to whom their purpose is not a little mysterious. The duty on coals entering London amounted in 1885 to no less than L449,343, and on wines to L8,488. By far the greater part of these amounts was, of course, collected on the railways and in the port of London. Originally imposed for the maintenance of London orphans, the wine dues became, like the coal duties, great sources of income, by which many notable London improvements, among them the Victoria Embankment, have been carried out. XIII [Sidenote: DARTFORD] Dartford, to which we now come, is a queer little town, planted in a profound hollow, through which runs its wealth-giving Darent. Mills and factories meet the eye at every turn. Not smoking, grimy factories of the kinds that blast the Midland counties, but cleanly-looking boarded structures for the most part, own brothers to flour-mills in outward aspect; places where paper is manufactured, and nowadays drugs and chemicals. Dartford is industrial to-day, but there are old-fashioned nooks, and some of the street-names are intriguing: "Bullace Lane" and "Overy Street," for example. Few people nowadays know what is a "bullace." It is, or was, a small wild plum, of the damson kind.