"In Cöln, that town of monks and bones, And pavements fang'd with murderous stones, And rags, and hags, and hideous wenches, I counted two-and-seventy stenches; All well-defined and genuine stinks! Ye nymphs, that reign o'er sewers and sinks, The river Rhine, it is well known, Doth wash the City of Cologne; But, tell me, nymphs, what power divine Shall henceforth wash the River Rhine?" The smell of the Fleet river was notorious; so much so, that Farquhar, in his _Sir Harry Wildair_, act ii., says, "Dicky! Oh! I was just dead of a Consumption, till the sweet smoke of _Cheapside_, and the dear perfume of _Fleet Ditch_ made me a man again!" In Queen Anne's time, too, it bore an evil reputation: _vide The Tatler_ (No. 238, October 17, 1710) by Steele and Swift.[9] "Now from all parts the swelling kennels flow, And bear their trophies with them as they go: Filth of all hues and odours seem to tell What street they sail'd from, by their sight and smell. They, as each torrent drives, with rapid force, From Smithfield or St. Pulchre's shape their course, And in huge confluent join'd at Snow Hill ridge, Fall from the Conduit, prone to Holborn Bridge. Sweepings from butchers' stalls, dung, guts, and blood, Drown'd puppies, stinking sprats, all drench'd in mud, Dead cats and turnip-tops come tumbling down the flood." We get a glimpse of prehistoric London, and the valley of the Fleet, in Gough's "British Topography," vol. i. p. 719 (ed. 1780). Speaking of John Conyers, "apothecary, one of the first Collectors of antiquities, especially those relating to London, when the City was rebuilding.... He inspected most of the gravel-pits near town for different sorts and shapes of stones. In one near the sign of Sir J. Oldcastle, about 1680, he discovered the skeleton of an elephant, which he supposed had lain there only since the time of the Romans, who, in the reign of Claudius, fought the Britons near this place, according to Selden's notes on the Polyolbion. In the same pit he found the head of a British spear of flint, afterwards in the hands of Dr. Charlett, and engraved in Bagford's letter." We, now-a-days, with our more accurate knowledge of Geology and Palæontology, would have ascribed a far higher ancestry to the "elephant." As a matter of course, a little river like the Fleet must have become the receptacle of many articles, which, once dropped in its waters, could not be recovered; so that it is not surprising to read in the _Mirror_ of March 22, 1834 (No. 653, p. 180), an account of antiquarian discoveries therein, which, if not archæologically correct, is at least interesting.