consequently the key of the City of London. It is a regular
fortification. The design of it was a pentagon, but the water
bastion, as it would have been called, was never built. The plan
was laid out by Sir Martin Beckman, chief engineer to King Charles
II., who also designed the works at Sheerness. The esplanade of
the fort is very large, and the bastions the largest of any in
England, the foundation is laid so deep, and piles under that,
driven down two an end of one another, so far, till they were
assured they were below the channel of the river, and that the
piles, which were shed with iron, entered into the solid chalk rock
adjoining to, or reaching from, the chalk hills on the other side.
These bastions settled considerably at first, as did also part of
the curtain, the great quantity of earth that was brought to fill
them up, necessarily, requiring to be made solid by time; but they
are now firm as the rocks of chalk which they came from, and the
filling up one of these bastions, as I have been told by good
hands, cost the Government 6,000 pounds, being filled with chalk
rubbish fetched from the chalk pits at Northfleet, just above
Gravesend.
The work to the land side is complete; the bastions are faced with
brick. There is a double ditch, or moat, the innermost part of
which is 180 feet broad; there is a good counterscarp, and a
covered way marked out with ravelins and tenailles, but they are
not raised a second time after their first settling.
On the land side there are also two small redoubts of brick, but of
very little strength, for the chief strength of this fort on the
land side consists in this, that they are able to lay the whole
level under water, and so to make it impossible for an enemy to
make any approaches to the fort that way.
On the side next the river there is a very strong curtain, with a
noble gate called the Water Gate in the middle, and the ditch is
palisadoed. At the place where the water bastion was designed to
be built, and which by the plan should run wholly out into the
river, so to flank the two curtains of each side; I say, in the
place where it should have been, stands a high tower, which they
tell us was built in Queen Elizabeth’s time, and was called the
Block House; the side next the water is vacant.
Before this curtain, above and below the said vacancy, is a
platform in the place of a counterscarp, on which are planted 106
pieces of cannon, generally all of them carrying from twenty-four
to forty-six pound ball; a battery so terrible as well imports the
consequence of that place; besides which, there are smaller pieces
planted between, and the bastions and curtain also are planted with
guns; so that they must be bold fellows who will venture in the
biggest ships the world has heard of to pass such a battery, if the
men appointed to serve the guns do their duty like stout fellows,
as becomes them.
The present government of this important place is under the prudent
administration of the Right Honourable the Lord Newbrugh.
From hence there is nothing for many miles together remarkable but
a continued level of unhealthy marshes, called the Three Hundreds,
till we come before Leigh, and to the mouth of the River Chelmer,
and Blackwater. These rivers united make a large firth, or inlet
of the sea, which by Mr. Camden is called IDUMANUM FLUVIUM; but by
our fishermen and seamen, who use it as a port, it is called Malden
Water.
In this inlet of the sea is Osey, or Osyth Island, commonly called
Oosy Island, so well known by our London men of pleasure for the
infinite number of wild fowl, that is to say, duck, mallard, teal,
and widgeon, of which there are such vast flights, that they tell
us the island, namely the creek, seems covered with them at certain
times of the year, and they go from London on purpose for the