{"id":"01KG8AKFKTRN00Z7743SVCB3R3","cid":"bafkreiebajsnxauzhkluifdiccok4jctci35a6r7tunm4mfhrwz3ga2szy","type":"chunk","properties":{"end_line":7074,"extracted_at":"2026-01-30T20:48:05.594Z","extracted_by":"structure-extraction-lambda","label":"Chunk 1","source_file":"01KG89J1DKC9HHJRKY25JZBEXW","start_line":7006,"text":"CHAPTER XXV.\r\nIN THE CITY OF DIS.\r\n\r\n\r\nAt the end of his brickmaking, our adventurer found himself with a\r\ntolerable suit of clothes—somewhat darned—on his back, several\r\nblood-blisters in his palms, and some verdigris coppers in his pocket.\r\nForthwith, to seek his fortune, he proceeded on foot to the capital,\r\nentering, like the king, from Windsor, from the Surrey side.\r\n\r\nIt was late on a Monday morning, in November—a Blue Monday—a Fifth of\r\nNovember—Guy Fawkes’ Day!—very blue, foggy, doleful and gunpowdery,\r\nindeed, as shortly will be seen, that Israel found himself wedged in\r\namong the greatest everyday crowd which grimy London presents to the\r\ncurious stranger: that hereditary crowd—gulf-stream of humanity—which,\r\nfor continuous centuries, has never ceased pouring, like an endless\r\nshoal of herring, over London Bridge.\r\n\r\nAt the period here written of, the bridge, specifically known by that\r\nname, was a singular and sombre pile, built by a cowled monk—Peter of\r\nColechurch—some five hundred years before. Its arches had long been\r\ncrowded at the sides with strange old rookeries of disproportioned and\r\ntoppling height, converting the bridge at once into the most densely\r\noccupied ward and most jammed thoroughfare of the town, while, as the\r\nskulls of bullocks are hung out for signs to the gateways of shambles,\r\nso the withered heads and smoked quarters of traitors, stuck on pikes,\r\nlong crowned the Southwark entrance.\r\n\r\nThough these rookeries, with their grisly heraldry, had been pulled\r\ndown some twenty years prior to the present visit, still enough of\r\ngrotesque and antiquity clung to the structure at large to render it\r\nthe most striking of objects, especially to one like our hero, born in\r\na virgin clime, where the only antiquities are the forever youthful\r\nheavens and the earth.\r\n\r\nOn his route from Brentford to Paris, Israel had passed through the\r\ncapital, but only as a courier; so that now, for the first time, he had\r\ntime to linger, and loiter, and lounge—slowly absorb what he\r\nsaw—meditate himself into boundless amazement. For forty years he never\r\nrecovered from that surprise—never, till dead, had done with his\r\nwondering.\r\n\r\nHung in long, sepulchral arches of stone, the black, besmoked bridge\r\nseemed a huge scarf of crape, festooning the river across. Similar\r\nfuneral festoons spanned it to the west, while eastward, towards the\r\nsea, tiers and tiers of jetty colliers lay moored, side by side, fleets\r\nof black swans.\r\n\r\nThe Thames, which far away, among the green fields of Berks, ran clear\r\nas a brook, here, polluted by continual vicinity to man, curdled on\r\nbetween rotten wharves, one murky sheet of sewerage. Fretted by the\r\nill-built piers, awhile it crested and hissed, then shot balefully\r\nthrough the Erebus arches, desperate as the lost souls of the harlots,\r\nwho, every night, took the same plunge. Meantime, here and there, like\r\nawaiting hearses, the coal-scows drifted along, poled broadside,\r\npell-mell to the current.\r\n\r\nAnd as that tide in the water swept all craft on, so a like tide seemed\r\nhurrying all men, all horses, all vehicles on the land. As ant-hills,\r\nthe bridge arches crawled with processions of carts, coaches, drays,\r\nevery sort of wheeled, rumbling thing, the noses of the horses behind\r\ntouching the backs of the vehicles in advance, all bespattered with\r\nebon mud—ebon mud that stuck like Jews’ pitch. At times the mass,\r\nreceiving some mysterious impulse far in the rear, away among the\r\ncoiled thoroughfares out of sight, would, start forward with a\r\nspasmodic surge. It seemed as if some squadron of centaurs, on the\r\nthither side of Phlegethon, with charge on charge, was driving\r\ntormented humanity, with all its chattels, across.\r\n\r","title":"Chunk 1"},"relationships":[{"peer":"01KG8AJJRWBE8SV99PER96J4GW","peer_type":"chapter","predicate":"in"},{"peer":"01KG89J1DKC9HHJRKY25JZBEXW","peer_type":"file","predicate":"extractedFrom"},{"peer":"01KG89HMDZKNY753EZE1CJ8HZW","peer_type":"collection","predicate":"collection"},{"peer":"01KG8AKFKT80GPVFS43B6H49MG","peer_type":"chunk","predicate":"next"}],"ver":2,"created_at":"2026-01-30T20:48:05.754Z","ts":"2026-01-30T20:48:18.506Z","edited_by":{"method":"manual","user_id":"01KFF0H3YRP9ZSM033AM0QJ47H"}}