I have not space here to enumerate all the petty nationalities, whose merchants trade with London, but the above table, obtained from the custom house authorities and therefore authentic, may serve to indicate what the trade of London is, and the vast interests which gather there. The United States does not figure so conspicuously as might be expected here, the Alabamas and Floridas perhaps have something to do with the paucity of American commerce with the commercial metropolis of England.
THE COMMERCIAL AND LONDON DOCKS.
The most wonderful of all the London sights are the huge artificial basins, bound in masses of masonry and known as the London Docks. No other city in the world can boast of such magnificent artificial basins, where millions of tons of shipping can be accommodated. It is enough to make an American feel humiliated to pay a visit to these wonderful docks, and to be forced to compare them with the rotten wooden wharves which environ the great city of New York, and which are honored with the title of docks.
The principal docks of London are those which I give below with their water areas, cost, and the number of vessels which they accommodate:
| WATER AREA. | LAND AREA. | NO OF VESSELS ACC. | COST. | |
| Commercial Docks, | 75 acres, | 150 acres, | 200 | £610,000 |
| London Docks, | 40 " | 100 " | 320 | 900,000 |
| West India Docks, | 90 " | 295 " | 1104 | 1,600,000 |
| East India Docks, | 18 " | 31 " | 112 | 380,000 |
| St. Catharine's Docks, | 15 " | 24 " | 160 | 2,252,000 |
| Surrey Docks and Canal, | 71 " | 40 " | 300 | 423,000 |
| Victoria Docks, | 90 " | ½ mile frontage, | 400 | 1,072,871 |
| Brentford Dock and Canal, | 90 miles long, | 16 acres, | 2,000,000 | |
| Regent's Canal, | 8½ miles long, | 300 |
The Commercial Dock is chiefly used by vessels in the oil, corn, timber, and tobacco trade; and there is floating space for fifty thousand loads of lumber, and the warehouses afford storage for one hundred and fifty thousand quarters of corn, while the yards of the company will hold four million pieces of deals, and staves without number. The lock in the South Commercial Dock is two hundred and twenty feet long by forty-eight feet wide, with a depth of twenty-two feet, and will admit vessels of twenty-six feet draught. Five hundred thousand tons of shipping have been received here in a year, representing about one thousand five hundred vessels of various tonnage.
The London Docks extend from East Smithfield to Shadwell and have twelve thousand four hundred and forty feet of wharf frontage, and are intended principally for the reception of vessels laden with wines, brandy, tobacco, and rice.
There are forty warehouses for the storage of merchandise of every description, convenient in arrangement, and magnificent in design and execution. The cubical capacity of the warehouses is two hundred and forty-nine thousand four hundred and thirty tons; two hundred and thirty-one thousand one hundred and forty-seven for dry goods, and eighteen thousand two hundred and eighty-three for wet goods.
The tobacco house in these docks sends its very strong odor all over the Thames, and it is as good as the flavor of a Havana cigar almost to smell this huge warehouse as you pass by on the river in a steamboat. This warehouse is the largest of its kind in the world, covering five acres of ground, and is rented by the government at fourteen thousand pounds a year of the company, for all the London Docks are owned by stock companies, and this perhaps explains the economy displayed in their construction, and their useful adaptability to the commerce of London.