ST. JAMES’S © GREEN PARKS 65 
order. On this side, as well as on that towards St. 
James’s Palace, the grass plots are covered with cows 
and deer, where they graze or chew the cud, some 
standing, some lying down upon the grass. . . . Agree¬ 
ably to this rural simplicity, most of these cows are 
driven, about noon and evening, to the gate which leads 
from the Park to the quarter of Whitehall. Tied to 
posts at the extremity of the grass plots, they swill pas¬ 
sengers with their milk, which, being drawn from their 
udders on the spot, is served, with all cleanliness peculiar 
to the English, in little mugs at the rate of a penny a 
mug.” The combination of the gay crowd in hooped 
petticoats, brilliant coats, and powdered wigs, with the 
peaceful, green meadows and the browsing deer and cows, 
forms an attractive picture. 
All this had changed long before the final departure 
of the cattle, when the last old woman was pensioned off, 
and the sheds carted away. A use was found for the 
fragments of the concrete foundations of the last milk¬ 
maid’s stall. They were made into a sort of rockery, 
on which Alpine plants grow well, to support the bank at 
the entrance to the new frame-grounds at Hyde Park. 
But to return to Charles II.’s time, when the cows 
were undisturbed. The great feature of what Pepys 
calls the “ brave alterations ” was the canal. He 
mentions more than one visit when the works were in 
progress. In October 1660 he went “ to walk in St. 
James’s Park, where we observed the several engines at 
work to draw up water, with which sight I was very 
much pleased.” The canal, when finished, was 2800 
feet long and 100 broad, and ran through the centre of 
the Park, beginning near the north end of Rosamund’s 
Pond. An avenue of trees was planted on either side, 
