Above and between the bridges the scene changes, but is none the less animated. Here comes a heavy, lumbering barge, its brown sail loosely furled, depending for its momentum upon the tide, and guided by a long sweep. Barges, lighters, tugs, fishing-smacks, passenger steamboats, and a variety of smaller craft so crowd the river that were we to stand on Blackfriars Bridge a boat of some description would pass under the arches every thirty or forty seconds.
But by far the most important feature is the passenger-boats. These are apparently countless. They make landings every few blocks, now on one side the river, now on the other, darting here and there, up and down, and adding largely to the bustle. For a penny, the equivalent of two cents American currency, one may enjoy a water ride of five or six miles--say from London Bridge to Lambeth Palace. When we reflect that all this immense traffic is crowded between the banks of a stream at no point as wide as the East River opposite Fulton Ferry, New York, and impeded by bridges at that, the difficulties of navigation will be in some measure understood; and I have purposely dwelt on this that my readers may fully appreciate what follows.
Every one knows how, in America, the steamboat is controlled by a pilot perched high above the passengers in the "pilot-house"; how he steers the boat, and at the same time communicates with the engineer far below him by means of bells--the gong, the big jingle, the little jingle, and so on. But the penny boats of the Thames are managed far differently. The wheelsman is at the stern in the old-fashioned way; but on a bridge stretched amidships between the two paddle-boxes, and right over a skylight opening into the engine-room, stands the captain. Beneath him, sitting or standing by this skylight, is a boy of not more than twelve or fourteen years of age, who, I observed, from time to time called out some utterly unintelligible words, in accordance with which the engine was slowed, stopped, backed, or started ahead as occasion required. It took me a long time to discover _what_ the boy said, from the peculiar sing-song way in which he called out, but it took me much longer to find out _why_ he said it.