Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 11.djvu/416

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406


NOTES AND QUERIES. [11 s. XL MAY 22, 1915.


The ' Dictionary of National Biography ' (Second Supplement) says that Florence Nightingale was christened by the wounded men " The Lady of the Lamp," but where is the contemporary authority ?

As to the term "ministering angel," used by Macdonald (above), there is the follow- ir g reference in a letter to the editor of The Times, 20 Jan., 1855, p. 7, col. 6 : "To quote one man's language, ' She was more of a ministering angel than anything else.' ' ROBERT PIERPOINT.

The phrase "The Lady of the Lamp" seems to have been bestowed on Florence Nightingale by the soldiers under her care in the military hospital at Scutari. As early as about 1856 a plaster statuette of Miss Nightingale (standing figure with lamp in right hand) was executed by Miss J. H. Bonham-Carter.

In ' Santa Filomena,' by Longfellow, which appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, circa 1858, is the following :

A Lady with a Lamp shall stand In the great history of the land, A noble type of good, Heroic womanhood.

ARCHIBALD SPARKE, F.R.S.L.

[Several other correspondents thanked for send- ing Longfellow's lines.]

JULIUS C^SAR AND OLD FORD (US. xi.

190, 289). Referring to MAJOR G. YARROW BALDOCK'S re >ly, permit me to say that a score of bewildering conclusions "of anti- quaries concerning the oldest East London road over the River Lea might be quoted. Most of them forget that the Lea down to the time of Alfred the Great was, in effect, an estuary, and then a delta, for many miles from the coast of Essex. If there is any evidence of Roman use of the modern so- called " Roman Road " in North Bow, it should be discoverable, for, unlike so many other places around London, the area remained a lonely heath or morass on both sides of the Lea until almost within living recollection, only used for pasture at favour- able seasons, and subject to tidal floods. The so-called " Roman Road " is not yet three quarters of a century old, and the exploiters of that extension of the old Green Street from the village of Bethnal Green found themselves dealing with virgin marlv bottom land suitable for brickmalurig, but yielding nothing interesting to the antiquary. 'Drifts Way," as the bridle-path through unhedged fields was called, was entered by the side of a beerhouse called The Roman Arms " ; and it was, as is


indicated in Old English and Dutch ~by its name, a way to the Old Ford over the Lea. In Roman -British times the greater part of Essex to the sea -coast, and along the wide and wandering course of the Lea up to Ware, must have been fen-country, through the bogs and morasses of which, not one, but many streams meandered and over- flowed. Not one, but many causeways would therefore be necessary for giving the Roman legions access to the British strong- holds and fastnesses and forests in the heart of the great county of Essex. Mr. Lethaby's conclusion, " There may have been a Roman Road by way of Old Ford ; there must have been one by way of Whitechapel, Mile End, and Bow," is still valid ; and so is Mr. Harper's view that " the Old Norwich Road from Aid gate yet follows the Roman Way into the country of the Iceni." And evidences of any indubitable road-work of the Romans in the Old Ford area are still to come. MAC.

THOMAS SKOTTOWE : SOUTH CAROLINA BEFORE 1776 (11 S. x. 509; xi. 31). Accord- ing to a map of about the date of Queen Anne, printed in MacCrady's 'History of South Carolina,' this colony was originally divided into three counties, Colleton, Berkeley, and Craven, named after three of the original grantees, to which was afterwards added a fourth, Granville, named after another Palatine, Lord Granville. These settlements stretched about thirty - five to sixty miles from the coast, and were well cultivated with maize, cotton, rice, and silk. Beyond these limits were " back blocks " which stretched away to "the Great Savane," "the vacant lands," and "the Indian lands" in the north-west. Granville County, the most southern, lay between the Savannah and Combahee Rivers, and is represented now by Beaufort and Hampton Counties and a small extension to the north-west between those rivers. Its own name disappeared after the Independence. Colleton County, named after Sir John Colleton, had a much larger coast -line than now, stretching from Combahee River to Stono River as now, and bulging back very considerably between Combahee River and Four Hole Creek, a branch of Edisto River. Berkeley County's coast-line, according to MacCrady, ran from Stono Creek on the south to Sewee River on the north Sewee being probably the Black River and did not include the piece between the mouths of the Edisto arid Stono Rivers. On the other hand, it included a piece between the Sewee and Santee Rivers not now given