And then back into the city and amongst its shipping. I have all the Britisher's attraction towards the haunts of the men that "go down to the sea in ships." Indeed, walking about among great wharves and docks, with the shipping of all nations loading and discharging cargo, and men of all nations hard at work about you, is in itself a liberal education.
But it can nowhere be enjoyed in such perfection as in London. There, emphatically, is the world's market; and written large upon the pavement of her gigantic docks is the whole Romance of Trade. A single shed holds the products of all the Continents; and what a book it would be that told us of the strange industries of foreign lands! Who cut that ebony and that iron-wood in the Malayan forests? and how came these palm-nuts here from the banks of the Niger? Mustard from India, and coffee-berries from Ceylon lie together to be crushed under one boot, and here at one step you can tread on the chili-pods of Jamaica and the pea-nuts of America. That rat that ran by was a thing from Morocco; this squashed scorpion, perhaps, began life in Cyprus or in Bermuda. Queer little stowaways of insect life are here in abundance, the parasites of Egyptian lentils or of Indian corn. The mosquito natives of Bengal swamps are brought here, it may be, in teakwood from some drift on the Burman coast. All the world's produce is in convention together. Here stands a great pyramid of horned skulls, the owners of which once rampaged on Brazilian pampas, or the prairies of the Platte River, and hard by them lie piled a multitude of hides that might have fitted the owners of those skulls, had it not been that they once clothed the bodies of cattle that grazed out their lives in Australia. Juxtaposition of packages here means nothing. It does not argue any previous affinities. This ship happens to be discharging Norwegian pine, in which the capercailzies have roosted, and for want of space the logs are being piled on to sacks of ginger from the West Indies. Next them there happens to-day to be cutch from India; to-morrow there may be gamboge from Siam, or palm oil from the Gold Coast. These men here are trundling in great casks of Spanish wine that have been to the Orient for their health; but an hour ago they were wheeling away chests of Assam tea, and in another hour may be busy with logwood from the Honduras forests. One of them is all white on the shoulders with sacks of American wheat flour, but his hands are stained all the same with Bengal turmeric, and he is munching as he goes a cardamum from the Coromandel coast. What a book it would make--this World's Work!