Page:Antiquity of Man as Deduced from the Discovery of a Human Skeleton.djvu/31

Rh now in the Engineer’s Office, East and West India Dock-Extension, Tilbury.

There is no question that the present river bore, in Cæsar’s time, the name it now retains. The "Thamesis" of the 'Commentaries' is the Latin form of "Thames." Tacitus writes "Tamesa." In 40, Vespasian, in conflict with the Britons under Caractacus, drew back toward the mouth of the Thames. If the river were fordable at Coway-Stakes, it does not seem probable that its subsequent course and banks differed materially from their present conditions. The body of water increased as it approached the sea; the tidal Thames at Tilbury is now half a mile in breadth. The latest evidence of subsidence, in some contiguity with the river's mouth, seems to be the legend of such loss of the lands of the Saxon Earl Godwin. If such cultivated surface did sink so recently it has received a deposit of sea-sand, which is left dry at low-water.

London probably originated in the convenience of its contiguity to the tidal Thames for transit by water of men and merchandise. In the time of Diocletian, 290, we lead that "After the defeat of Alectus his followers, taking flight to London and purposing to pillage that City and escape by sea, are met by another part of the Roman army." Whence it may be inferred that a commercial city on the Thames bank, on which now stands the "Tower," had, in course of time, grown to be a wealthy place. It seems reasonable to associate its foundation, like the fordable state of the Thames at Oatlands, with a condition of the river and its banks hardly, if at all, different from the present. Again, in the reign of Constantius, we read that Lupicinus, with a force of light-armed soldiers,