poultry, especially geese, are reared. Stock raising is carried on to some extent. The wood trade is important; other industries are the production of pottery, beer, flour, leather, bricks, wooden wares, spirits, tobacco and sugar. There is only one railway (between Grodno and Warsaw); the Bug is navigable, but wood only is floated down the Narev. The government is divided into seven districts, of which the chief towns, with their populations in 1897, are Lomza (q.v.), Ostrolenka (8679), Mazowiec (3900), Ostrów (11,264), Maków (7232), Kolno (4941) and Szczuczyn (5725).
LOMZA, a town of Russia, capital of the government of the same name, on the Narew, 103 m. by rail N.E. from Warsaw. Pop. (1872), 13,860, (1900) 22,428. Lomza is an old town, one of its churches having been erected before 1000. In the 16th century it carried on a brisk trade with Lithuania and Prussia. It was well fortified and had two citadels, but nevertheless often suffered from the invasions of the Germans and Tatars, and in the 17th century it was twice plundered by the Cossacks of the Ukraine. In 1795 it fell under the dominion of Prussia, and after the peace of Tilsit (1807) it came under Russian rule.
LONAULI, a town of India, in the Poona district of Bombay, at the top of the Bhor Ghat pass in the Western Ghats, by which the Great Indian Peninsula railway climbs from Bombay to Poona. Pop. (1901), 6686. It contains the locomotive works of the railway. Lonauli is a place of resort from Bombay during the hot season.
LONDON, a city and port of entry of Middlesex county, Ontario, Canada, situated 121 m. N.W. of Toronto, on the river Thames and the Grand Trunk, Canadian Pacific and Michigan Central railways. Pop. (1901), 37,981; but several suburbs, not included in these figures, are in reality part of the city. The local nomenclature is largely a reproduction of that of the great city whose name it has borrowed. Situated in a fertile agricultural district, it is a large distributing centre. Among the industries are breweries, petroleum refineries, and factories for the manufacture of agricultural implements and of railway carriages. The educational institutions include the Hellmuth Ladies’ College and the Western University (founded in 1878 under the patronage of the Church of England). London was founded in 1825–1826.
LONDON, the capital of England and of the British Empire, and the greatest city in the world, lying on each side of the river Thames 50 m. above its mouth.[1] The “City,” so called both formally and popularly, is a small area (673 acres) on the north bank of the river, forming the heart of the metropolis, and constituting within its boundaries one only, and one of the smallest, of twenty-nine municipal divisions which make up the administrative County of London. The twenty-eight remaining divisions are the Metropolitan Boroughs. The county thus defined has an extreme length (E. to W.) of 16 m., an extreme breadth (N. to S.) of 1112 m., and an area of 74,839 acres or about 117 sq. m. The boroughs are as follows:—
1. North of the Thames.—Touching the northern boundary of the county, from W. to E.—Hammersmith, Kensington, Paddington, Hampstead, St Pancras, Islington, Stoke Newington, Poplar.
Bounded by the Thames—Fulham, Chelsea, the City of Westminster (here the City of London intervenes), Stepney, Poplar.
Between Westminster, the City and Stepney, and the northern boroughs—St Marylebone (commonly Marylebone), Holborn, Finsbury, Shoreditch, Bethnal Green.
2. South of the Thames.—Wandsworth, Battersea, Lambeth, Southwark, Camberwell, Bermondsey, Deptford, Lewisham, Greenwich, Woolwich (with a small part of the north bank).
These names are all in common use, though their formal application is in some cases extended over several districts of which the ancient names remain familiar. Each borough is noticed in a separate article.
I. Extent and Site
The County of London is bounded N. and W. by Middlesex, E. by Essex and Kent, S. by Kent and Surrey. The Metropolitan police area, or “Greater London,” however, embraces the whole of Middlesex, with parts of the other three counties and of Hertfordshire. Its extent is 443,419 acres or nearly 693 sq. m., and its population is about seven millions. Only here and there upon its fringe the identity of this great area with the metropolis is lost to the eye, where open country remains unbroken by streets or close-set buildings.
Site.—North of the Thames, and west of its tributary the Lea, which partly bounds the administrative county on the east, London is built upon a series of slight undulations, only rarely sufficient to make the streets noticeably steep. On the northern boundary of the county a height of 443 ft. is found on the open Hampstead Heath. The lesser streams which flow from this high ground to the Thames are no longer open. Some, however, as well as other natural features effaced by the growth of the city, retain an historical interest through the survival of their names in streets and districts, or through their relation to the original site of London (in the present City). South of the Thames a broken amphitheatre of low hills, approaching the river near Greenwich and Woolwich on the east and Putney and Richmond on the west, encloses a tract flatter than that to the north, and rises more abruptly in the southern districts of Streatham, Norwood and Forest Hill.
In attempting to picture the site of London in its original condition, that is, before any building took place, it is necessary to consider (1) the condition of the Thames unconfined between made banks, (2) the slopes overlooking it, (3) the tributary streams which watered these slopes. The low ground between the slight hills flanking the Thames valley, and therefore mainly south of the present river, was originally occupied by a shallow lagoon of estuarine character, tidal, and interspersed with marshy tracts and certain islets of relatively firm land. Through this the main stream of the Thames pursued an ill-defined course. The tributary streams entered through marshy channels. The natural process of sedimentation assisted the gradual artificial drainage of the marshes by means of embankments confining the river. The breadth of this low tract, from Chelsea downward, was from 2 to 3 m. The line of the foot of the southern hills, from Putney, where it nearly approaches the present river, lies through Stockwell and Camberwell to Greenwich, where it again approaches the river. On the north there is a flat tract between Chelsea and Westminster, covering Pimlico, but from Westminster down to the Tower there is a marked slope directly up from the river bank. Lower still, marshes formerly extended far up the valley of the Lea. The higher slopes of the hills were densely forested (cf. the modern district-name St John’s Wood), while the lower slopes, north of the river, were more open (cf. Moor-gate). The original city grew up on the site of the City of London of the present day, on a slight eminence intersected by the Wal- or Wall-brook, and flanked on the west by the river Fleet.
These and other tributary streams have been covered in and built over (in some cases serving as sewers), but it is possible to trace their valleys at various points by the fall and rise of streets crossing them, and their names survive, as will be seen, in various modern applications. The Wallbrook rose in a marsh in the modern district of Finsbury, and joined the Thames close to the Cannon Street railway bridge. A street named after it runs south from the Mansion House parallel with its course. The Fleet was larger, rising in, and collecting various small streams from, the high ground of Hampstead. It passed Kentish Town, Camden Town and King’s Cross, and followed a line approximating to King’s Cross Road. The slope of Farringdon Road, where crossed by Holborn Viaduct, and of New Bridge Street, Blackfriars, marks its course exactly, and that of Fleet Street and Ludgate Hill its steep banks. The name also appears in Fleet Road, Hampstead. From King’s Cross downward the banks were so steep and high that the stream was called
- ↑ See map in London Statistics (vol. xix., 1909), an annual publication of the London County Council, which besides these divisions shows “Water London,” the London main drainage area, and the Central Criminal Court district.
