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NOTES AND QUERIES. l*" s. v. MAKCH 3, 1000

upon our pioneers of to-day. Schemers for their own selfish ends are to-day brought face to face with the staunch advocates of public good. MR. MARSHALL, too, is upon a wrong ground when he says that it is ridiculous to think that the Board of Management of the Gravesend Tunnel, and not Ralph Dodd, was to blame. I could relate some historical evi- dence to the contrary, but to an impartial reader Cruden's 'History of the Port of London,' which I see has inspired MR. MAR- SHALL, should be sufficient. MR. MARSHALL stops short of telling us how it is there re- lated that poor Dodd had his ideas stolen from him, to be made use of by money grub- bers and " incompetent gentlemen." So long as the meetings of the proprietors were held publicly in the Town Hall of Gravesend all was going fairly well, but when they drifted into such holes and corners as the " Crown and Anchor" in the Strand, poor honest, simple-minded Dodd could not put a spoon into the turtle soup there, and so he was left out in the cold, and other and more sinister engineers or schemists were called in to advise. Any fairly competent engineer to-day, look- ing upon the remains of that old unfilled hole in the " old main " at Gravesend, would fail to see wherein lay any insurmountable engineering difficulty, even with the science of 100 years ago, and would probably compute the cost of what had been actually done at under l',OOOJ., including all the necessary pumping machinery. There could not possibly be a better material to dig a tunnel in than solid chalk, especially as all the excavated chalk could be readily sold for value. The two miles of tunnel of Dpdd's before quoted, be- tween Strood and Higham, I remember had originally no roof or side walls other than the bare original material, and we used to go through in the early days of the South-Eastern Railway, third class, in open trucks, with seats, it is true, but never a coyer over our heads from the rain or any drippings from the tunnel top. Wherein then comes in the additional expenditure of 14,242^. 10s. Cruden's story gives it briefly :

"The incomplete and disordered state of the accounts, from the beginning to the completion of the undertaking, is a proof of the great negligence or incapacity of those who were entrusted with the management of that department ";

and then adds :

" The doubts that have been entertained of the practicability of such a work have not been con- firmed or disproved by this result, but they have been in some measure removed by the completion of a tunnel under the Thames at Rotherhithe, where most formidable difficulties have been over- come by the distinguished engineer {Sir M. I.

Brunei, who happily had the direction of that undertaking conndeci to him." Thus the Thames Tunnel at Rotherhithe was well directored, and Sir M. I. Brunei succeeded, in spite of the fact that his original estimates were absurdly inadequate, and in spite of the fact that his tunnel turned out of no practical utility when finished. For that matter, it never was really finished till a modern railway took it in hand, and constructed the slopes on either side. Prac- tically a real horse and cart has never gone through it yet, and MR. GEORGE MARSHALL cannot deny that it was an afterthought to turn it into a railway tunnel.

Poor Ralph Dodd, on the other hand, was badly directored, and so his Thames tunnel at Gravesend came to a miserable ending, and so did he. Therefore I would give him now a statue. CHARLES COBHAM, F.S.I.

The Shrubbery, Gravesend.

COMPANIONS OF CORTES (9 th S. iv. 499). About thirty years ago I was so fortunate as to secure at auction a copy of Bernal Diaz's history of the conquest of Mexico, which bears on its title-page :

"The True History of the Conquest of Mexico by Captain Bernal Diaz del Castillo, one of the Conquerors. Written in the year 1568. Translated from the original Spanish by Maurice Keating, Esq. London: Printed for J. Wright, Piccadilly, by John Deans, High Street, Congletoii. 1800."

MR. DILLON alludes to some eight of the prominent cavaliers who accompanied Cortes, and Bernal Diaz devotes nearly a whole chapter to special personal mention of about three hundred of these "companions," with some notice of each and his peculiarities. The one of Sandoval is particularly happy. I copy it entire from my book, which is an old- fashioned square folio. I follow this with some quotations descriptive of the Spaniards' first entrance into the city of Mexico, which may be interesting to some of your readers :

"Captain Gonzalo de Sandoval was at the time of his arrival here about twenty-two years of age ; he was joint governor of New Spain for about eleven months ; in this officer courage and judgment were combined ; he was robust in body, his legs rather bowed, and his countenance masculine ; his hair and beard were curled, and of a light brown ; his voice was rough, and somewhat terrible, and lie stammered a li.ttle ; he was a plain man, and one who did not know much about letters, not avari- cious of gold, but attentive to his business like a good officer, seeing that his soldiers did their duty well, and taking good care of them. He was not fond of rich dresses, but went plain like a soldier. He had the best horse that ever was seen ; he was a chestnut, with a star on his forehead, and his near foot white ; his name was Motilla ; he became a proverb, so that when any horse was extraordinarily