easily the oversea and coasting traffic. That was in the days
when, in the part called the Pool, just below London Bridge, the
vessels moored stem and stern in the very strength of the tide
formed one solid mass like an island covered with a forest of
gaunt, leafless trees; and when the trade had grown too big for the
river there came the St. Katherine's Docks and the London Docks,
magnificent undertakings answering to the need of their time. The
same may be said of the other artificial lakes full of ships that
go in and out upon this high road to all parts of the world. The
labour of the imperial waterway goes on from generation to
generation, goes on day and night. Nothing ever arrests its
sleepless industry but the coming of a heavy fog, which clothes the
teeming stream in a mantle of impenetrable stillness.

After the gradual cessation of all sound and movement on the
faithful river, only the ringing of ships' bells is heard,
mysterious and muffled in the white vapour from London Bridge right
down to the Nore, for miles and miles in a decrescendo tinkling, to
where the estuary broadens out into the North Sea, and the anchored
ships lie scattered thinly in the shrouded channels between the
sand-banks of the Thames' mouth. Through the long and glorious
tale of years of the river's strenuous service to its people these
are its only breathing times.



XXXIII.