The universal geography : earth and its inhabitants

LAXCASHXRE. 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. Vast 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 llersev, and at Garston, above Liverpool.
"Vrhilst eight of these docks are thrown open to the general trade, there are others
speciall}' 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,
iu 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
Fig. loo.— St. George's H.iLi..
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 mUe 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
• 3ee Appendix.