jority of the ports on the British Channel are of this character, and
indeed a large portion of the harbours of Great Britain. Calais,
Boulogne, Havre, and Dieppe, are all inaccessible at low water. The
cliffs are broken by a large ravine, a creek makes up the gorge, or a
small stream flows outward into the sea, a basin is excavated, the
entrance is rendered safe by moles which project into deep water, and
the town is crowded around this semi-artificial port as well as
circumstances will allow. Such is, more or less, the history of them
all. Havre, however, is in some measure an exception. It stands on a
plain, that I should think had once been a marsh. The cliffs are near
it, seaward, and towards the interior there are fine receding hills,
leaving a sufficient site, notwithstanding, for a town of large
dimensions.

The port of Havre has been much improved of late years. Large basins have
been excavated, and formed into regular wet docks. They are nearly in the
centre of the town. The mole stretches out several hundred yards on that
side of the entrance of the port which is next the sea. Here signals are
regularly made to acquaint vessels in the offing with the precise number
of feet that can be brought into the port. These signals are changed at
the rise or fall of every foot, according to a graduated scale which is
near the signal pole. At dead low water the entrance to the harbour, and
the outer harbour itself, are merely beds of soft mud. Machines are kept
constantly at work to deepen them.

The ship from sea makes the lights, and judges of the state of the tide
by the signals. She rounds the Mole-Head at the distance of fifty or
sixty yards, and sails along a passage too narrow to admit another
vessel, at the same moment, into the harbour. Here she finds from
eighteen to twenty, or even twenty-four feet of water, according to
circumstances. She is hauled up to the gates of a dock, which are opened
at high water only. As the water falls, one gate is shut, and the
entrance to the dock becomes a lock: vessels can enter, therefore, as
long as there remains sufficient water in the outer harbour for a ship
to float. If caught outside, however, she must lie in the mud until the
ensuing tide.

Havre is the sea-port of Paris, and is rapidly increasing in importance.
There is a project for connecting the latter with the sea by a ship
channel. Such a project is hardly suited to the French impulses, which
imagine a thousand