free beyond the threshold of sandbanks below the Nore. The waters
of the sea rush on past Gravesend, tumbling the big mooring buoys
laid along the face of the town; but the sea-freedom stops short
there, surrendering the salt tide to the needs, the artifices, the
contrivances of toiling men. Wharves, landing-places, dock-gates,
waterside stairs, follow each other continuously right up to London
Bridge, and the hum of men's work fills the river with a menacing,
muttering note as of a breathless, ever-driving gale. The water-
way, so fair above and wide below, flows oppressed by bricks and
mortar and stone, by blackened timber and grimed glass and rusty
iron, covered with black barges, whipped up by paddles and screws,
overburdened with craft, overhung with chains, overshadowed by
walls making a steep gorge for its bed, filled with a haze of smoke
and dust.

This stretch of the Thames from London Bridge to the Albert Docks
is to other watersides of river ports what a virgin forest would be
to a garden. It is a thing grown up, not made. It recalls a
jungle by the confused, varied, and impenetrable aspect of the
buildings that line the shore, not according to a planned purpose,
but as if sprung up by accident from scattered seeds. Like the
matted growth of bushes and creepers veiling the silent depths of
an unexplored wilderness, they hide the depths of London's
infinitely varied, vigorous, seething life. In other river ports
it is not so. They lie open to their stream, with quays like broad
clearings, with streets like avenues cut through thick timber for
the convenience of trade. I am thinking now of river ports I have
seen--of Antwerp, for instance; of Nantes or Bordeaux, or even old
Rouen, where the night-watchmen of ships, elbows on rail, gaze at
shop-windows and brilliant cafes, and see the audience go in and