Page:Henry Stephens Salt - A Plea for Vegetarianism and Other Essays.pdf/37

Rh filled with the pollution of wholesale slaughter. Dwellers in London, of superior sensibility, frequently express their disgust at the unsightly streets and buildings which everywhere meet the view, and their pity for the gross tastes and habits of their fellow-townsmen. Yet they raise no protest against the Foreign Cattle Market of Deptford, from which the wants of Londoners are largely supplied; though the deeds which are daily enacted there are such as can hardly commend themselves to an æsthetic-mind. At Deptford, as we learn from a lately-published account, there weekly arrive some three thousand bullocks, twenty thousand sheep, and a thousand calves. When they are landed at the entrance, “the creatures, to do them justice, are not often ill-conducted. Stupefied by the voyage, they are generally quiet enough, but sometimes the truth breaks in upon them, and they make a desperate effort for freedom. It is easy to guess what frightens them, for there is a strange scent in the air.” Such are the circumstances under which the animals enter these slaughter-houses, all of them, be it remembered, naturally harmless and gentle. They are ﬁnally “conducted to the long range