THE DISMAL SWAMP AT KILBURN.
" TELL 'co What it is, Geoarge," said, with Stanleyan and Livingstonian impressiveness, a bucolic person who had come up from the " Noarth," to a friend who had done likewise, as the two met on a narrow plank in the midst of a sea of mud, at the Kilburn Show, " the beastes has the best of it, be-er." The remark was at once true and forcible, and it is; so seldom that the " beastes " have the best of it, that the saying lent a new aspect to as dismal an occasion as has, perhaps, hitherto been offered in the delusive character of a public festivity to the crowded world of London, at the height of the season. The share of human beings in the big International Agricultural Show on Wednesday was, during the earlier part of, the day, depressing in the extreme, though there was some amusement to be got out of the assurances of officials on the spot that things had been infi- nitely worse, and that " you ,ought to have been here yesterday," —that is, presumably, if you were not having enough mud for your money on Wednesday, and desired a still more striking realisation of "the beautiful City of Eden, as it appeared in reality," supposing it to have burst out into an agricultural show, combined with a fancy fair. Considering that everybody has been complaining that a new misery has been added to life by the heartless accuracy of the American weather-forecasts, and that the meteorological misdemeanours of the present week were plainly foretold, there seems to have been a want of wis- dem somewhere in fixing the Show for the.rainy days 27cir mod- tenee of the Midsummer fortnight. The approach to the scene was lively enough between the showers, the very incongruityaof Edgware Road en fite, with fluttering pennons and sturdy flag- staffs, rearing aloft banners charged with the noblest devices, a fair imitation of Guiguol at a usually dreary corner of Percy Road, and of a thronging multitude, among which some of the boldest efforts of advertising hitherto resorted to were displayed in the solemn vicinity of Kensal Green, was in itself striking. Even when the scene of the display was reached, if the rain happened to be " holding off," in an interval of " coming on," the long lines of boarding, the tent-roofs, the fluttering of innumerable flags, the inscriptions in enormous letters over the top of everything—not half the anxious inquirers read them, and half of those, again, think it is safer to " ask," and drive the officials almost mad accordingly—the stream of locomotion which was making for amusement, over a waste of rough stones at the entrance, which ought to have had the steam-roller at work on them at nights, the vast contin- gent of unmistakable country - cousins, oven the toot- ling and banging of accidental bands exterior to the show, had a pleasant, holiday aspect. But the rough barriers, very like Smithfield cattle-pens, and the grimy, gritty passages, once gotten through, only the dauntless and enterprising spirit of a Micawber could withstand the horrors of the place. A vast irregular enclosure of booths and tents, erected on a foundation of slimy, black, slushy, ill-smelling mud ; a treacherous swamp (with occasional red-cinder oases), seamed with pools forming dangerous pitfalls, and along each side of its forbidding expanse an insecure and insuffi- cient footway laid of dirty planking, supplemented by horizontal hurdles, which did not keep even the compara- tively few visitors of the morning hours from the perils of the mud-flat, and were utterly trodden down and submerged before the settled bad weather of the afternoon. In the centre a narrow tramway, to and fro on which travels a steam tramcar, by which the unwary traveller, desiring to reach the horse-sheds at the farther end of the expanse, was deposited in a slough of despond far out of reach even of the frail but friendly plank, or the half-buried hurdle. Animated competition for places in this vehicle set in early, and anything more foolish than the parties looked, rushing up and down the line in the middle of the swamp, with a dim and distant view of long ranges of sheds, all devoted to eminently scientific uses, but as secure from intrusion as a prehistoric lake vil- lage, was not to be seen in the Show, except, indeed, the Bath-chairs ! They wore a joke much appreciated by the public. A long line of fragile basket constructions, without hoods, displayed upon the surface of the swamp, and each occupied by a motionless man in waterproof attire, pre- sumably waiting for the elderly ladies who wanted to be trun- dled in the rand at two shillings an hour, had a perfect fascina- tion for the gazers congregated about the wooden buildings at the entrance, and elicited from a pensive individual, who wore a sou'-wester and had his legs done up in scraps of sacking, the sensible reflection, " There'll be a deal of roomatisnm to be got out of them chairs after this !" A sample of cruelty to animals was afforded by the few privileged individuals who were driving open carriages about the enclosure, for the horses—all in mud- stockings—could hardly drag the lightest vehicle through the mud ; and the newspaper and catalogue boys were running about in improvised gaiters, made of the waste copies of the Tuesday's journals.
The continuous procession on the planks was an amusing spectacle, not without suggestions of the tight-rope balancing- order about it, for the collisions of angry umbrellas produced much swaying, and the bucolic elbow is endowed with power to aid the bucolic determination to attain its ends. Occasional fragments of parental counsel might catch the ear, as one fol- lowed meekly the tramping progress of some hardy person from the provinces, of the John Brodie type, who did not mind a trifle of rain, and probably found himself in less mud than he was used to. " Maria, take care you don't get edged off !" struck the present writer as expressive ; and " Sophy, mind your boots !" as unreasonable. The beasts, who had the best of it, were well worth seeing, even under such difficulties.; but the truth is that the sheep, the goats, and several classes, of the great horned animals, could hardly be seen at all; the. sheds in which they are lodged, very com- fortably, as may be ascertained by a glance at those at the outer end, were absolutely unapproachable. Some beautiful sheep, trim, curly, white, just as if they were going to stand for their portraits to Mr. Goodall, were housed near the path of planks ; but there was a long, vague vista of prospective mutton beyond them, and all around a mud morass. A severe struggle was rewarded by a sight of the winner of the first prize among the foreign goats. He is a wise and imposing personage, his name is " General," and he belongs to the best friend of the " beastes," llaroness Burdett-Coutts. The sheds in which the shorthorns were taking it quietly were centres of interest, and it was delightful to see, when one could, such beautiful and pros- perous animals ; the fine, shiny heads of the mild, massive cows emerging from the clothing in which their bodies were carefully enveloped, as they rested amid clean dry straw, their deep re- pose contrasting with the busy anxiety of their attendants. There was only one reflection which offered any compensation for the weather,—it was that the great efforts which had been, and were still being made to produce and carry on such a spectacle, the vast amount of labour which it demanded, made themselves better understood. And as the undeterred crowds poured iu, they seemed to feel that ; on all sides one heard won- der expressed at " how they had ever done it," and admiration of the spirit and industry of the officials of all classes. The one hit of rising ground within the enclosure displayed some pretty floral decoration, and the Dairy was speedily thronged, its cool freshness vanishing before the damp and mud that came in with the multitude. To the unlearned in such matters, the chief impression conveyed is astonishment that there should be so many ways of making butter, and admiration of the order and neatness of the display. Bacon, too, was nobly represented ; but, happily, as in the American or European Fresh-meat class there were " no entries," one had not to think of the nice creatures on view as moat.
An announcement that the " parades " of British and Foreign Cattle must be deferred until the afternoon caused great dis- appointment to numbers who had come early, expecting to witness those performances, as advertised, at ten o'clock
and noon respectively ; and who could not remain until late in the day. The decision'of the authorities was, however, accepted with great good-humour; the inevitable was making itself felt ; fate was against the Show. The Queen herself had been beaten by the weather ; but the Princes and their wives would be sure to come in the afternoon, and quite early in the day the Crown Prince of Sweden was working his way among the sheds with laudable perseverance. Wise visitors repaired as early as possible to the stables of the French and German' horses ; after a while the deep-laid straw was turned to sticky slush, and the utmost exertions of the men em- ployed failed to keep a possible footpath. The five line Percherons were greatly admired, and much attention was directed to the German and Flemish horses, whose bow-necks, in pictures, are usually supposed to be efforts of the painter's imagination. The procession through the stables was, however, of rather a silent and melancholy character, the true lovers of horses being always depressed by the impossibility of ex- changing their sentiments with the stablemen, and being, in the present instance, reduced to dumb-show. They pointed to the red-and-blue rosettes affixed to the bars on the stalls of the prize animals, and nodded cheerily to inarticulate Teuton grooms, who took no notice of their congratulations. The beautiful English horses had crowds of admiring visitors, though early in the days theirs is rather an undress lev6e or unceremonious reception, the grand occasion being the afternoon parade, for which groat numbers of spectators were content to wait patiently for hours, having taken refuge in the vast stand. Town and country were very distinctly to be discerned among the crowd, the business-like aspect and attire of the latter being unmistakable. Sturdy, cheerful, ruddy men, in. in- vincible boots, and with trousers turned up a good six inches, or serviceable gaiters; made their rounds in couples, or companies, determined on seeing everything, and the accents of many a distant county came pleasantly to the ear, amid the Cockney. buzz. Much grave discussion might be overheard in presence of the truly wonderful machinery, the graceful, canoe-like wag- gons, the marvellous machines whereby processes, mysterious to the non-agricultural intelligence, are effected by methods still more mysterious, and whose construction is curious and beau- tiful, oven to the most ignorant eyes: The use of brilliant colouring in the machinery has a very pleasant effect, and gives the eminently practical collection quite a festive as- pect. The long lines of canvas booths, with fluttering pen- nons and flaunting advertisements of the wares within, made the place resemble a great fair; and the magnitude of the Show, the multitude of the objects, the labour which the whole scene represented, the industries of which it presented a summary, the immense interests which it embodied, the kingdoms of nature which it typified, forced upon one an almost oppressive sense of the magnitude of that continuous effort by which the world is provided with its daily bread.
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