Page images
PDF
EPUB

doors, and ply their bobbins from morning to night for a very small compensation. The wages which the individual work women earn are exceedingly small, and yet the costliness of the product is exceedingly great, so immense is the amount of labor which is required for the accomplishment of the work. Mademoiselle Pagny had barbes which were perhaps a yard and a half long and eight inches wide, which, at the cost of manufacture, were worth forty dollars, and this at the rate of twenty cents a day, which is about the average pay of the lacemakers, represents a labor of two hundred days on a surface of not more than three square feet.

CHAPTER VIII.

ABOUT HARBORS AND ROADSTEADS.

THE greatness and glory of England, and the exalted position which she occupies among the other nations of the earth, depend in a very great degree upon certain peculiar facilities which the island of Great Britain affords for manufacturing and for commerce, and upon the extraordinary energy and skill exerted by the AngloSaxon race in developing and employing them. The facilities for manufacturing specially enjoyed in England consist chiefly in the immense stores of coal and iron which lie imbedded in the island,. and by means of which two millions of laborers are able to perform the labor of twenty millions. The commercial advantages are derived mainly from the great number of deep and capacious harbors which abound along the coast of the islands, and the safe roadsteads, or places of anchorage for ships, in the various bays, channels, and straits which separate the different islands from each other.

In both these respects France is very differ

ently situated from England. The stores of coal and iron found in France are far inferior to those existing in England, and the coasts are exposed on every side to winds and storms, with scarcely any places of refuge for shipping except such as have been made by means of artificial breakwaters and piers.

This is especially the case in the channel which separates England from France. On the English side nature has formed several very good harbors on the French side none.

The government of France have made, from time to time, in the course of the last five or ten centuries, a number of artificial harbors along the coast, which answer very well the purposes of merchant ships. These harbors are made at the mouths of the rivers that empty into the sea, on the northern coast of France. There is one at Calais, another at Boulogne, another at Dieppe. Another, the largest and best of all, is at the mouth of the Seine, at Havre. Indeed, the French name of this town, Le Havre, means The Harbor, this being the harbor, par excellence, of the whole coast.

Besides these there are several minor harbors, that are used principally for fishing smacks and ether small vessels engaged in the coasting trade.

The way in which these artificial harbors are made is by building two long piers, one on each side of the river, at its mouth, and extending them out toward the sea until deep water is reached, and then keeping open the passage between these piers by dredging out the sand and mud, as fast as it fills in, by means of dredging machines. There are also usually two large basins excavated at the inner end of the piers, near the town. Of these two basins one is kept always full, by means of prodigious gates, which are never opened to let vessels go in and out except when the tide is up. This is called the floating basin, because the vessels that are in it are always afloat, the basin itself being kept always full of water.

The other basin is much larger, and there are no gates at the entrance to it, so that it fills itself and empties itself at every change in the tides. The tides rise and fall so much along this coast, and the depth of water within the mouths of the rivers is so small, that when the tide is low the bed of the large basin and the channel between the two long piers leading from it out to sea, are almost empty. Nothing remains in them, in fact, but small tortuous streams of turbid water winding through the centre, while everywhere else nothing is seen but

a vast expanse of mud, in which boats, smacks, and vessels of all sorts lie embedded, some more or less upright, and others tilted down upon their sides-all, of course, wholly immovable until the next tide comes in to float them again.

Such harbors as these are called tidal harbors. It is evident that no vessel can enter or leave them except at high tide. For the rest of the time the vessels must either lie helpless in the mud in the larger, or outer basin, or if they have been taken into the inner basin in order to be kept afloat, they are fastened in by the great gates, which can not be opened until the tide comes up again; for if the gates were to be opened when the tide is low all the water in the floating basin would immediately run out, and leave the vessels that had been taken in there embedded in the mud like those outside.

These tidal harbors answer very well for merchant vessels that are to come in and lie alongside a quay, to discharge their cargoes, and also for the small steamers which go to and fro across the channel, taking travelers from England to France or bringing them back again; but they do not answer the purpose of ships of war. Ships of war require a place of refuge where they can come in at all times of tide; and more than this, they require a large anchorage ground,

« PreviousContinue »