But while I am rummaging among the dusty corners of my memory, and dragging forth worm-eaten old books to the light; while I have suffered the hare of the minute-hand, and the tortoise of the hour-hand (the tortoise wins the race), to crawl or scamper at least half round the clock, Billingsgate Market itself—the modern—the renovated—a far different place to that uncleanly old batch of sheds and hovels, reeking with fishy smells, and more or less beset by ruffianly company, which was our only fish market twenty years ago—New Billingsgate, with a real fountain in the centre, which during the day plays real water, is now in full life and bustle and activity. Not so much in the market area itself, where porters are silently busied in clearing piles of baskets away, setting forms and stools in order, and otherwise preparing for the coming business of the fish auction, as on the wharf, in front of the tavern known to fame as Simpson’s, and where the eighteenpenny fish ordinary is held twice every day, except Sunday, in each year of grace. This wharf is covered with fish, and the scaly things themselves are being landed, with prodigious celerity, and in quantities almost as prodigious, from vessels moored in triple tier before the market. Here are Dutch boats that bring eels, and boats from the north sea that bring lobsters, and boats from Hartlepool, Whitstable, Harwich, Great Grimsby, and other English seaports and fishing stations. They are all called “boats,” though many are of a size that would render the term ship, or at least vessel, far more applicable. They are mostly square and squat in rigging, and somewhat tubby in build, and have an unmistakeably fishy appearance. Communications are opened between the vessels, each other, and the shore, by means of planks placed from bulwark to bulwark; and these bulwarks are now trodden by legions of porters carrying the fish ashore. Nautical terms are mingled with London street vernacular; fresh mackerel competes in odour with pitch and tar; the tight strained rigging cuts in dark indigo-relief against the pale-blue sky; the whole is a confusion, slightly dirty but eminently picturesque, of ropes, spars, baskets, oakum, tarpaulin, fish, canvas trousers, osier baskets, loud voices, tramping feet, and “perfumed gales,” not exactly from “Araby the blest,” but from the holds of the fishing-craft. [Illustration: BILLINGSGATE MARKET: CARRYING FISH ASHORE.]