ON THE LEA VALLEY.
11
Then, the section shown in Fig. 5 illustrates the way in
which sections in river deposits may show fossil remains of very
different ages at the same depth below the surface and only a
few feet apart from each other. They may be also in the same
kind of material. For a human relic or mammalian bone found
at the top of the gravel underlying the peat at the northern end
of the section might have been deposited many centuries earlier
than some similar object, at the same depth from the surface,
and also in the gravel, but found midway between the end of the
peat and the channel. The object under the peat might have
been deposited there in pre-Roman times ; that twenty yards or
less southward might belong to the eighteenth century or later.
For the changes in the position of the old channel, which have
caused the destruction of the peat and its replacement by sand
and gravel containing irregular seams of vegetable matter, might
have occurred at any subsequent time.
Fig. 8. Dug-out Boat found in the Walthamstow Reservoir Excavations, on
trolly for removal. Drawn by Mr. H. A. Cole. For drawing of the boat
in situ, see Frontispiece to the present volume.
I have already mentioned the discovery of the old vessel,
generally supposed to be a Viking ship, near the old channel.
But some distance to the south-west, in the excavations for the
same reservoir, a boat of much more ancient character was
found. This was an ancient British "Dugout" canoe, of the
kind so common in ancient lake dwellings. Mr. W. Traill,
one of the engineers superintending the excavations, was
fortunately able to get it out almost entire, and it is now carefully
preserved. From an account which Mr. Traill has given
of the canoe in The Reliquary and Illustrated Archaeologist for
January, 1901, I take the following details :—