LANCASHIEE. 



273 



extend for 5 miles along the river-side, and have an area of 1,000 acres, of which 

 the 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 excavated 

 at 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 others 

 specially dedicated to America, the East Indies, Russia, or Australia, or respectively 

 to the timber trade, the tobacco trade, or emigration business ; and whilst certain 

 quays are covered with bales of cotton, others are given up to sacks of corn, barrels 

 of palm oil, or ground nuts. A stranger who spends a day in these docks, and in 

 the 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 commercial 

 town of the world, though its export of British produce is more considerable, and its 



Yio;. 135. — St. George's Hat.t,. 



commercial fleet more numerous and powerful.* More than one-third of the tonnage 

 of the whole of the United Kingdom belongs to the port of Liverpool, whose 

 commercial marine is superior to that of either France or Germany. In order to 

 facilitate the embarkation and disembarkation of travellers, a landing-stage, 

 floating on pontoons, and connected with the land by six iron bridges, has been 

 placed in the Mersey. This remarkable structure is nearly half a mile in length, 

 and rises and sinks with the tide. 



In 1720 scarcely one-fortieth of the foreign trade of England was carried on 

 through the port of Liverpool. A century later about one-sixth of this trade had 

 passed into the hands of the merchants established at the mouth of the Mersey, and 

 at present they export about one-half of all the British produce that finds its way 

 into foreign countries. The increase of population has kept pace with the expanding 



* See Appendix. 



