The Nore sand remains covered at low-water, and never seen by human
eye; but the Nore is a name to conjure with visions of historical
events, of battles, of fleets, of mutinies, of watch and ward kept
upon the great throbbing heart of the State. This ideal point of
the estuary, this centre of memories, is marked upon the steely
gray expanse of the waters by a lightship painted red that, from a
couple of miles off, looks like a cheap and bizarre little toy. I
remember how, on coming up the river for the first time, I was
surprised at the smallness of that vivid object--a tiny warm speck
of crimson lost in an immensity of gray tones. I was startled, as
if of necessity the principal beacon in the water-way of the
greatest town on earth should have presented imposing proportions.
And, behold! the brown sprit-sail of a barge hid it entirely from
my view.

Coming in from the eastward, the bright colouring of the lightship
marking the part of the river committed to the charge of an Admiral
(the Commander-in-Chief at the Nore) accentuates the dreariness and
the great breadth of the Thames Estuary. But soon the course of
the ship opens the entrance of the Medway, with its men-of-war
moored in line, and the long wooden jetty of Port Victoria, with
its few low buildings like the beginning of a hasty settlement upon
a wild and unexplored shore. The famous Thames barges sit in brown
clusters upon the water with an effect of birds floating upon a
pond. On the imposing expanse of the great estuary the traffic of
the port where so much of the world's work and the world's thinking
is being done becomes insignificant, scattered, streaming away in
thin lines of ships stringing themselves out into the eastern
quarter through the various navigable channels of which the Nore