434 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XL. No. 1030 



depth at low water was from 17 to 20 feet, 

 and steamers with a maximum draught of 

 25^ feet could go up to Glasgow. This was 

 the result of dredging, deepening and 

 widening the river, and increasing the tidal 

 flow. The record of the Tyne has been sim- 

 ilar. The effect of dredging the Tyne was 

 that in 1895 — I quote Mr. Hareourt again 

 — "Between Shields and Newcastle, where 

 formerly steamers of only 3 to 4 feet 

 draught used to ground for hours, there 

 is now a depth of 20 feet throughout at the 

 lowest tides. " It is because engineers have 

 artificially improved nature's work on the 

 Clyde and the Tyne that these rivers have 

 become homes of shipbuilding for the whole 

 world. Building training walls on the 

 Seine placed Eouen, seventy-eight miles up 

 the river, high among the seaports of 

 France. The Elbe and the Ehine, the giant 

 rivers Mississippi and St. Lawrence, an.l 

 many other rivers, have, as we all know, 

 been wonderfully transformed by the hand 

 of the engineer. 



But land in turn, in this matter of trans- 

 port, has encroached upon sea. In old 

 days, when roads were few and bad, when 

 there were no railways, and when ships 

 were small, it was all-important to bring 

 goods by water at all parts as far inland as 

 possible. In England there were numerous 

 flourishing little ports in all the estuaries 

 and up the rivers, which, under modern 

 conditions, have decayed. No one now 

 thinks of Canterbury and Winchester in 

 connection with seaborne traffic; but Mr. 

 Belloc, in "The Old Road," a description 

 of the historical Pilgrims' Way from Win- 

 chester to Canterbury, points out how 

 these two old-world cathedral cities took 

 their origin and derived their importance 

 from the fact that each of them, Canter- 

 bury in particular, was within easy reach 

 of the coast, where a crossing from France 

 would be made; each on a river — in the 



case of Canterbury on the Stour just above 

 the end of the tideway. In the days when 

 the Island of Thanet was really an island, 

 separated from the rest of Kent by an arm 

 of the sea, and when the present insignifi- 

 cant river Stour was, in the words of the 

 historian J. R. Green, "a wide and nav- 

 igable estuary," Canterbury was a focus 

 to which the merchandise of six Kentish 

 seaports was brought, to pass on inland; 

 it was in eSeat practically a seaport. Now 

 merchandise, except purely local traffic, 

 comes to a few large ports only, and is car- 

 ried direct by rail to great distant inland 

 centers. Reclus wrote that bays are con- 

 stantly losing in comparative importance as 

 the inland ways of rapid communication 

 increase; that, in all countries intersected 

 with railways, indentations in the coast- 

 line have become rather an obstacle than 

 an advantage; and that maritime com- 

 merce tends more and more to take for its 

 starting-place ports situated at the end 

 of a peninsula. He argues, in short, that 

 traffic goes on land as far out to sea as pos- 

 sible instead of being brought by water as 

 far inland as possible. He clearly over- 

 stated the case, but my contention is that, 

 for human purposes, the coast-line, though 

 the same on the map, has practically been 

 altered by human agency. Ports have been 

 brought to men as much as men to ports. 

 We see before our eyes the process going 

 on of bridging India to Ceylon so as to 

 carry goods and passengers as far by land 

 as possible, and in Ceylon we see the great 

 natural harbor of Trineomalee practically 

 deserted and a wonderful artificial harbor 

 created at the center of population, Co- 

 lombo. 



But let us carry the argument a little 

 further. Great Britain is an island. Un- 

 less there is some great convulsion of na- 

 ture, to all time the Strait of Dover will 

 separate it from the continent of Europe. 



