night of a cloud of coal-dust. The most important ingredient for
getting the world's work along is distributed there under the
circumstances of the greatest cruelty meted out to helpless ships.
Shut up in the desolate circuit of these basins, you would think a
free ship would droop and die like a wild bird put into a dirty
cage. But a ship, perhaps because of her faithfulness to men, will
endure an extraordinary lot of ill-usage. Still, I have seen ships
issue from certain docks like half-dead prisoners from a dungeon,
bedraggled, overcome, wholly disguised in dirt, and with their men
rolling white eyeballs in black and worried faces raised to a
heaven which, in its smoky and soiled aspect, seemed to reflect the
sordidness of the earth below. One thing, however, may be said for
the docks of the Port of London on both sides of the river: for
all the complaints of their insufficient equipment, of their
obsolete rules, of failure (they say) in the matter of quick
despatch, no ship need ever issue from their gates in a half-
fainting condition. London is a general cargo port, as is only
proper for the greatest capital of the world to be. General cargo
ports belong to the aristocracy of the earth's trading places, and
in that aristocracy London, as it is its way, has a unique
physiognomy.

The absence of picturesqueness cannot be laid to the charge of the
docks opening into the Thames. For all my unkind comparisons to
swans and backyards, it cannot be denied that each dock or group of
docks along the north side of the river has its own individual
attractiveness. Beginning with the cosy little St. Katherine's
Dock, lying overshadowed and black like a quiet pool amongst rocky
crags, through the venerable and sympathetic London Docks, with not
a single line of rails in the whole of their area and the aroma of