management, can have only a like good
fortune. It must be said that the people of Havre would be deeply
humiliated should it prove otherwise.

A very appropriate location was selected for the Exhibition, in the busiest
quarter of the center of the city. Its circumference embraces one of the
finest docks of the port--the Commerce Dock, thus named because it could
not be finished (in 1827) except by the financial co-operation of the
shipowners and merchants of the city. For the purposes of the Exhibition,
this dock is now temporarily closed to navigation.

In the various structures, wood has been exclusively employed. The main
building, which alone has a monumental character, is Arabic in style, and
is situated in the center of Gambetta Place, over Paris Street, which here
becomes a tunnel. Two facades overlook the ends of this tunnel. A third
facade, which is much longer, fronts Commerce Dock.

The edifice is surmounted by a spherical cupola that serves as a base to a
semaphore provided with masts and rigging. On each side of the sphere there
are two pendent beacons. Wide glazed bays open in the external facades, and
allow the eye to wander to the south through Paris Street as far as to the
outer port, to the summits of Floride, and to see beyond this point the bay
of La Seine, Honfleur, and the coast of Grace. To the north, the most
limited view has for perspective the City Hall, its garden, and the
charming coast of Ingonville.

The principal facade, that which fronts Commerce Dock, from which it is
separated solely by a garden laid out on Mature Place, is the most
attractive and most ornamented. Here are located the restaurants, the
cafes, the music pavilion, and a few other light structures.

Internally, this portion of the Exhibition comprises a vast entertainment
hall, brilliantly and artistically decorated with tympans representing the
three principal ports of commerce--Havre, Bordeaux, and Marseilles--and
with pictures by the best marine painters. It is lighted by an immense
stained glass window which fronts Commerce Dock and the garden, and which
lets in a flood of soft light.

The galleries to the right and left, over Paris Street, are reserved for
the exhibitions of the ministers of state and of the large public
departments, and for models, specimens, plans, and drawings of war and
merchant vessels, and of pleasure boats, and for plans of port, roadstead,
and river works.

Two endless galleries run to t