Nicholson's wharf. Once more steam comes
to the rescue. A spare "Bachelor" or
"Wedding-ring," or "Citizen A," is hired to tug it
up against wind and tide, and all is safe. The
wharf is reached, the boxes of new fruit are
landed, and in a few minutes more the oranges
which, on the previous evening were
skimming the British Channel, will be tasted in
the show-room in Monument Yard.

The directors of the South-Western Railway
are not content with what they have
already achieved. One triumph leads to
another, and having succeeded, as thus
shown, in placing the Channel and the
Thames wharves next door to each other,
they are now intent upon erecting such a
commodious range of warehouses at the Nine
Elms terminus as shall serve as bonded store-
rooms, where, if they choose, the importers of
goods may expose their produce to their
customers, and where bargains may be made
without the necessity for dispatching cargoes
to the city. The company have purchased an
extensive tract of river frontage for the
purpose, and are now at work upon this huge pile.
It is certain that any arrangement which may
tend to relieve the great metropolis of some
of its redundant traffic, to lessen the dense
crush in the too-thronged streets, will prove a
boon that should not be too lightly thought
of, provided the interests and requirements of
commerce are equally cared for.

Our picture of "Oranges and Lemons" will
scarcely be complete without a passing notice
of the great Hebrew fruit mart in Duke's
Place. The correct name of this locality is
Saint James's Place, and it is supposed that
its more popular title had its origin in a
certain "Duke's Palace" which stood upon
the spot when London's wealthy citizens
congregated about Tower Hill, the London Wall,
and Bishop's Gate. At the present time there
is small vestige of anything ducal about the
spot. It has not its like anywhere about the
metropolis, and to be thoroughly understood
must be seen. It is true that Duke's Place is
dirty and rickety; yet, in spite of this, there
is an air of Orientalism, of Eastern
independence, which gives a charm even to the
dingy wares and the empty packages. The
open-air shops, piled up with ripe,
luscious, radiant fruit, are duplicates of the
Indian bazaars we have walked through in
our Eastern travels, though without their
sunshine. The handsome nut-brown, dark-
haired daughters of Israel, jewelled and
ribboned, and smiling, seen dimly amidst the
shadows of those murky spots, appear like
breathing pictures of a master hand.

All day and every day, Saturdays alone
excepted, these busy "fruit-wives" ply their
avocations, whilst their lords and masters are
out on weighty matters, attending fruit sales
at the broker's, inspecting and valuing cargoes
of newly-landed oranges and nuts, or gathering
information, or bartering, or a thousand
other things by which they may "put money
in their purse." If we credit the words of the
dark-haired maid of Judah who is counting
out a hundred of oranges into a retailer's
basket—and gallantry bids us not doubt her—
she is selling her fruit at precisely the price
it cost; a marvellous proceeding truly, and
which induces astonishment that all Duke's
Place has not been forced through the Insolvent
Court years ago! We could not avoid
asking ourself, if this be so, whence come the
glittering rings and gay ear-rings worn by
our bright-eyed informant? and whence too
the rich furniture and costly fittings that
peer at us through the thick atmosphere
from first-floor windows? Aladdin, we are
told, had his precious stores of jewelled wealth
in marvellous gardens far underground; the
magicians of Duke's Place cultivate their
trees of precious stones on the first and
second floors.

Fridays and Sunday mornings are the great
fair days of orange and nut dealing in this
quarter. At such times it presents a busy
aspect with the motley crowd of men, boys
and women from all parts of the metropolis,
—the "costers" of London, and who are
said to number about four thousand. Carts,
hand-barrows, flats, baskets, sacks, all are
ready for their destined loads; and so active
are these people, that in a few hours all will
be again quiet; the business of the day is
done, and it is not an unusual thing for one
of these Duke's Place merchants to handle
between one and two hundred pounds within
a very brief space of time.

There are features of this trade which it
may be well not to overlook in our brief
notice, for though not apparent at first sight,
they are important in their results. One of
them is the encouragement which the
increasing trade in oranges and lemons gives to
the building and navigating of clipper ships.
Fruits so perishable as these demand a rapid
transit; and hence, although steam does
much, there has, with the expanding trade,
grown up a large class of fast-sailing, well-
manned schooners, equal in most respects to
any gentleman's yacht, affording an admirable
training for efficient sailors and masters.

The part played by oranges and lemons
in improving the health of our large town
populations, is not less important; vast
numbers of the poorer classes would be
otherwise debarred from the use of any
anti-scorbutic during the spring and early
summer, a period when the absence of
vegetables and home-grown fruits renders such
things as oranges doubly valuable.

The juice of lemons, or "lime-juice," as
it is called, is equally valuable during long
voyages at sea, where of necessity access to
vegetables and fruit is out of the question,
and where a more than usual quantity of salt
meat must be consumed. It is not too much
to say that thousands of lives have been
saved by the use of lime-juice on board ship,
whilst millions of lives on shore have been