Page:The Galaxy, Volume 5.djvu/798

768 each having the consciousness that his chance of success or failure was poised about equally in the balance. The foremen were rapid and business-like. Every voice was hushed when the pencil dropped. As the rolls were called each man answered " Aye " to his name, and walked through the gate; but more than one-half the whole number still remained unemployed behind. It was a grim scene—that crowd separating—a part at once swallowed up in the diverging streets, but a greater part retiring to the waiting yard, in hope that some change of wind during the day might require the foreman to call for fresh hands, at fourpence sterling the hour!

Breakfasting at a convenient eating-house, and returning to spend an hour in traversing the interlocked and extensive quays, some pungent with the smell of tobacco, some stupifying with the fumes of rum, others fragrant with the aroma of spices, or sickening with the stench of hides and horns; everywhere coopers hammering at casks, chains clanking from cranes, mates shouting orders from unlading ships whose gunwales were far below the wharves, and groups of sailors speaking various tongues, I found my friends awaiting me at our rendezvous, at the hour appointed, prepared for descent into the wine vaults.

There are four wine vaults in the London docks, each having no communication with the others. The one we were about entering was the largest, covering an area of twelve acres, which extended under the neighboring streets. It is built with arches like a crypt, of solid stone masonry, fourteen feet from floor to roof, flagged with Portland stone, and roofed with brick. The ventilation is by means of perpendicular shafts. No light of day is admitted, nor are hanging lights used except in alcoves constructed on purpose. A Davy safety-lamp was given to each member of our party when we reached the lowest landing. A heavy iron door, creaking on its hinges, admits you into the vaults. It is not possible to imagine a place of deeper gloom. The stone floors are sticky and cold. The atmosphere is damp. White bottle spiders weave their webs from pillars to roof Lizards and other saurian reptiles creep around the dim corners, and a species of vermin, bred by the idiocrasy of the place, known well enough to the inspectors and workmen, and harmless, abound everywhere. From the vaultings hang vinous fungi, yards in length, like dark woolly clouds, light as gossamer and inflammable as tinder. Tens of thousands of pipes of wine, so arranged that each can be tapped, are stored in every direction. You sniff its fumes, and even though you do not taste it, feel its effects. The vintages of more than forty years have their representatives in these vaults, each placed by itself and perfectly known in market by its flavor. Tasters of wine will tell, of port more particularly, the year when and the district where it was produced, and so much does its quality depend upon the sunshine that ripened the grape, that the product of one season is held at a fourfold value over that of others. We were urged by the inspector who conducted us to make use of our "tasting order," but we declined,—the place, the air, the darkness, fungi and vermin, satisfying whatever of vinous desires we had previously indulged.

Returning from the vaults, we visited the "Mixing House," immediately above. It is a vast room, filled with vats of capacity from 5,000 to 23,000 gallons each, where the mysteries of the wine trade are performed unobserved by the vulgar eye. By this remark no reflection is intended to be cast on the character of the wines in the London docks. Beyond doubt they are the best in the world. A thousand dealers and half a million purchasers are guarantors of fair play in the great mixing house; and these wines have been mixed ever since the grape was