Photo by A. W. Cutler 



CARAVANS RETURNING TO SURREY FROM KENT (ENGLAND) AT THE CLOSE OF THE 



HOP-PICKING SEASON 



It is truly an extraordinary fact that 

 the English should have been able to 

 menace the domestic commerce of other 

 nations. 



Normally the important trade centers 

 of northern Europe were grouped around 

 these rivers, and Belgium and Holland, 

 because of their position at the mouth of 

 the Rhine, which drained the richest and 

 best developed section of central Europe, 

 were the marts of European exchange 

 until the discoveries of the fifteenth and 

 sixteenth centuries made the oceanic 

 trade of more and more consequence. 



GEOGRAPHY GAVE HER MANY PECULIAR 

 ADVANTAGES 



Accident has placed the good natural 

 harbors on the European coast far apart : 

 Hamburg and Emden ; the group of 

 harbors in Belgium and Holland ; and 



then along the coast of France no really 

 good harbor, from the famous port of 

 Calais till the Channel is passed, and 

 around the promontory appears the port 

 of Brest. At Nantes, at La Rochelle, at 

 Bordeaux, are great harbors, but the good 

 harbors — and this fact is still as impor- 

 tant as *it ever was — which are con- 

 nected naturally by water or by road 

 with the great commercial centers of 

 northern Europe, are all north of the 

 Channel. 



Another extraordinary fact, or acci- 

 dent if you will, made the Channel the 

 only safe and convenient approach to 

 these harbors. The mountains of the 

 British Isles are on the western side, 

 toward the Atlantic, and the more im- 

 portant mountains under the sea, whose 

 peaks appear in a succession of islands 

 along the Scotch and Irish coasts, the 



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