LONDON’S STORES

Hokitika Guardian, 29 November 1927, Page 4

LONDON’S STORES

MILKS OF WIXF. VAULTS. (Bv H. Fyfo, in the “Daily Chronicle.”) A List people who drop in at a wool sale see only wool. They would see, if their imaginations were in proper working order, wide landscapes <>r grass land with sheep .scattered over them. They would see vast flocksTioing rounded up for shearing. They "«uld see the shearers at work. Every bale of wool would represent to their mind’s eye so many animals grazing in sun-steeped lands. As they listened to the voice of the auctioneer selling the “clip” which is arriving just now, their thoughts would be wandering in the long sheds where the fleeces came off, among the 1 <;an. hrownfaced men who get them off so skilfully. among the pink, shivering sheep that run out into the paddocks when (he operation has been performed. j Those were some of the pictures T i saw while T was at the word sale in I that part of the London Docks which 1 lies iust below the Tower Bridge. Here there is always a huge store of wool, i At this time of the year it is increased every day.

It is packed in hales weighing 4()oih. apiece ; each -1001 b. is the wool off sixty sheep. Altogether, there are brought here every year the fleeces of between thirty and forty million of the useful creatures which provide us with so large a part of our clothes. Try to count them next time you lie awake at night! AX ERRIF CEILING. Below the wool warehouses are the wine and spirit vaults. There are twenty-eight miles of them. Did I hear you gasp ? I am not surprised. I gasped myself when the distance was casually mentioned. As we go in we take sticks with small lamps on the ends of them, and the first tiling 1 notice, holding my stick up to see wlmt the vaults are like, is that the roof has a {covering of thick fungus. This heightens the strange. eerie appearance of the place. You look along dim corridors which seem to have no ending. Here and there are gas-jets, hut these only make the obscurity more impenetrable. Casks on each side of the corridors, looming out of the semi-dark ness. And on the ' roof this fungus growth, some whitey- j grey, some black, mysterious and disturbing, like the lining to the cavern of some loathsome monster. j “What is it? AYliat causes it?” I ,

ask. ■ “The fumes that are given off by the wine,” I am told. What an argument for the tofaT abstainers to use I

ACRES OF SPIRITS. Yet not swell a good argument, nffbr all, for there is none of it in tne hrnndy vaults. Spirits do not. it seems, creates this creepy, fungoid atmosphere. “Four acres of hrandv,” my guide tells me. Four acres! 1 try to take it in. And about the same acreage' of rum at the West India Dock. And whisky, too .and gin! Think what amount of taxation the Treasury collects on all this store of strong drink. RUBBER; STOCKS.

Here is another set of pictures brought into my mind by the masses of rubber which are also among the marvels of London Docks. Tropical forests. Natives tapping the rubber trees. In Brazil black folk, marvellously tattooed. In the Straits Settlements, Chinese, or slim gilds tn white loose cotton clothes. Long lines of men and women with parcels of the raw rubber on their heads, taking it in to the white folks’ “stations.“

There is .some of it in the raw. The tappers brought it in like that, till mixed with bark and soil. It is purified until it can be made into the large flat, circles called “biscuits.’’ From tropical forests come also many of the drugs which the London Docks handle in such volume. In a warehouse in Cutler Street I was suddenly aware of some nauseous medicne. I sniffed uneasily. 1 felt that the matron might he bearing down on mo with the horrid stuff in her hand. “Don’t you like it?” asked my guide with a grin. “It's rhubarb from Central Asia. And that black stuff looks like toffee, doesn’t it?that’s aloes, the bitter stuff, you know. It’s a gum off the aloe plant. Collected by West African negroes. And see, they packed it up in anything that came handy, even monkey skins. There are some. And in those baskets- they’re from Brazil—is the barkflint ipecacuanha cough mixture is made from. And these bundles are saisparilla in the raw. GETTING “THE BLUES.” Of iodine there are two and a half million pounds in hand. and. as we are among the IV, let us glance at the Indigo Store. We won’t stay long, for if we did. we should come out blue! Are you interested in ivory? Here is a floor covered with the finest tusks. Arc you barbarian enough to admire bird skins when separated from bird bodies? Here arc masses of the most gorgeous plumage you can imagine.