Unless we take this hill-top route to the left we shall not have seen Highgate; nor, in truth, is there much to see, now that the old Gatehouse Tavern is gone, and with it the last outward and visible connection with the days of yore. The tavern marked the site of the old turnpike-gate that stood here, the lineal successor of the hermit’s original pitch lower down, when the old route to Barnet by Tallingdon Lane, Crouch End, Hornsey Great Park, Muswell Hill, Friern Barnet, and Whetstone was superseded by the new one through the Bishop of London’s estate, by Finchley and Whetstone, in 1386. It is in the existence at that time of the Bishop’s park that we may perhaps seek with success the origin of the name of “Highgate,” which does not necessarily allude to the very obviously “high” gate situated here—more than 350 feet above sea-level. No; it was the “haigh” gate, the portal which gave access through the enclosure (_haia_) with which my Lord Bishop’s domain was presumably surrounded. Through his land all traffic passed until it emerged on the other side of Whetstone, where, commanding the entrance to Barnet, stood another gate in receipt of tolls, swelling the income of that very business-like ecclesiastic and his successors for hundreds of years. At the Highgate end dues were collected on horned cattle, among other things, and here originated the practice of being initiated into the freedom of Highgate, a mock ceremonial founded upon Roman Catholic rites at the time of the Reformation. For three hundred years this farcical observance was continued at the tavern by the gate, and only fell into disuse with the decay of coaching. Those who had not previously passed this way were “sworn in on the horns,” a practice traced to the unwillingness of the cattle drovers who frequented the tavern to allow strangers to mix with them. This exclusiveness no doubt originated in the fear of trade secrets being divulged, a feeling which may still be met with among commercial travellers of the older school, who resent the appearance of the mere tourist in their midst. The stranger who in olden times happened upon these drovers at Highgate was discouraged from taking bite or sup here, and only permitted to join them after having kissed the horns of one of their beasts. This speedily became elevated (or degraded, shall we say?) into a sort of blasphemous ritual parodying the admission of a novice into the Church, and this again, with the lapse of time and the dying of religious hatreds, developed into the merely good-natured farce played during the last hundred years of the existence of the custom.