Identifier: earthitsinhabita481recl (find matches)
Title: The earth and its inhabitants ..
Year: 1881 (1880s)
Authors: Reclus, Elisée, 1830-1905 Ravenstein, Ernest George, 1834-1913 Keane, A. H. (Augustus Henry), 1833-1912
Subjects: Geography
Publisher: New York, D. Appleton and company
Contributing Library: MBLWHOI Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Boston Library Consortium Member Libraries

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The docks are the great marvel of Liverpool. No other town can boast ofpossessing so considerable an extent of sea-water enclosed between solid masonrywalls, and kept under control by locks. There are maritime cities with roadsteadscapable of accommodating entire fleets, but few amongst them have dockssufficiently spacious to admit thousands of vessels at one and the same time, likeLondon and Liverpool. The latter is even superior in this respect to the greatcommercial emporium on the Thames, and certainly preceded it in the constructionof docks. In 1700 the Corporation of Liverpool first caused a pool to be deepenedin order that it might afford shelter to vessels. This, the precursor of the existingbasins, has been filled up since, and the sumptuous revenue and customs buildingshave been raised upon its site. But for the one dock thus abolished, twenty-sevenothers, far more vast and convenient, have been constructed since. These docks
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LANCASHIEE. 273 extend for 5 miles along the river-side, and have an area of 1,000 acres, of whichthe basins, wet and dry docks, occupy 277 acres. Yast though these docks are,they no longer suffice for the trade of the Mersey, and others have been excavatedat Birkenhead, on the Cheshire bank of the Mersey, and at Garston, above Liverpool.Whilst eight of these docks are thrown open to the general trade, there are othersspecially dedicated to America, the East Indies, Russia, or Australia, or respectivelyto the timber trade, the tobacco trade, or emigration business ; and whilst certainquays are covered with bales of cotton, others are given up to sacks of corn, barrelsof palm oil, or ground nuts. A stranger who spends a day in these docks, and inthe warehouses which surround them, visits, in fact, a huge commercial museum,in which various articles are represented in bulk, and not by small samples. Liverpool cannot yet claim precedence of London as the greatest commercialtown of the wor

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