"How did you know?" asked Rollo.
"I read it in the guide book," said Mr. George.
Here Mr. George took his guide book out of his pocket, and began to read from it, as he walked along, the following description:-
"'As you enter the dock, the sight of the forest of masts in the distance, and the tall chimneys vomiting clouds of black smoke, and the many-colored flags flying in the air, has a most peculiar effect; while the sheds, with the monster wheels arching through the roofs, look like the paddle boxes of huge steamers.'"
"Yes," said Rollo; "that is exactly the way it looks."
"'Along the quay,'" continued Mr. George, still reading, "'you see, now men with their faces blue with indigo; and now gaugers, with their long, brass-tipped rules dripping with spirit from the cask they have been probing; then will come a group of flaxen-haired sailors, chattering German; and next a black sailor, with a cotton handkerchief twisted turban-like around his head; presently a blue-smocked butcher, with fresh meat and a bunch of cabbages in a tray on his shoulder; and shortly afterwards a mate, with green paroquets in a wooden cage. Here you will see, sitting on a bench, a sorrowful-looking woman, with new, bright cooking tins at her feet, telling you she is an emigrant preparing for her voyage. As you pass along the quay the air is pungent with tobacco, or it overpowers you with the fumes of rum; then you are nearly sickened with the smell arising from heaps of hides and huge bins of horns; and shortly afterwards the atmosphere is fragrant with coffee and spice. Nearly every where you meet stacks of cork, or yellow bins of sulphur, or lead-colored copper ore.'"
"It is an excellent description," said Rollo, when Mr. George paused.
Mr. George resumed his reading as follows:-
"'As you enter this warehouse the flooring is sticky, as if it had been newly tarred, with the sugar that has leaked through the casks--'"
"We won't go there," said Rollo, interrupting.
"'And as you descend into these dark vaults,'" continued Mr. George, "'you see long lines of lights hanging from the black arches, and lamps flitting about midway.'"
"I should like to go there," said Rollo.
"'Here you sniff the fumes of the wine,'" continued Mr. George, "'and there the peculiar fungous smell of dry rot. Then the jumble of sounds, as you pass along the dock, blends in any thing but sweet concord. The sailors are singing boisterous Ethiopian songs from the Yankee ship just entering; the cooper is hammering at the casks on the quay; the chains of the cranes, loosed of their weight, rattle as they fly up again; the ropes splash in the water; some captain shouts his orders through his hands; a goat bleats from some ship in the basin; and empty casks roll along the stones with a hollow, drum-like sound. Here the heavy-laden ships are down far below the quay, and you descend to them by ladders; whilst in another basin they are high up out of the water, so that their green copper sheathing is almost level with the eye of the passenger; while above his head a long line of bow-sprits stretch far over the quay, and from them hang spars and planks as a gangway to each ship. This immense establishment is worked by from one to three thousand hands, according as the business is either brisk or slack.'"
Here Mr. George shut the book and put it in his pocket.
"It is a very excellent account of it altogether," said Rollo.
"I think so too," said Mr. George.
* * * * *
As our travellers walked slowly along after this, their attention was continually attracted to one object of interest after another, each of which, after leading to a brief conversation between them, gave way to the next. The talk was accordingly somewhat on this wise:-
"O uncle George!" said Rollo; "look at that monstrous pile of buck horns!"
"Yes," said Mr. George; "it is a monstrous pile indeed. They must be for knife handles."
"What a quantity of them!" said Rollo. "I should think that there would be knife handles enough in the pile for all creation. Where can they get so many horns?"
"I am sure I don't know," said Mr. George.
So they walked on.
Presently they came to an immense heap of bags of coffee. They knew that the bags contained coffee by the kernels that were spread about them all over the ground. Then they passed by long rows of barrels, which seemed to be filled with sugar. Mr. George walked by the side of the barrels, but Rollo jumped up and ran along on the top of them. Then came casks of tobacco, and next bars of iron and steel, and then some monstrous square logs of mahogany.
Mr. George and Rollo walked on in this manner for a quarter of a mile, and at length they came to one of the drawbridges. This drawbridge led over a passage way which formed a communication from one basin of the dock to another. It was a very long and slender bridge of iron, made to turn on a pivot at one end. There was some machinery connected with it to work it.
"I wish they would come and turn this drawbridge away," said Rollo. "I want to see how it works."
"Perhaps they will after dinner," said Mr. George.
"Let us sit down, then, here somewhere," said Rollo, "and wait."
So Mr. George and Rollo, after crossing the drawbridge, sat down upon some of the fixtures connected with the machinery of the bridge.
From the place where they sat they had a good view of the whole interior of the dock. They could see the shipping, the warehouses, the forests of masts, the piles of merchandise, and the innumerable flags and signals which were flying at the mast heads of the vessels.
"It is a wonderful place," said Rollo; "but I don't understand how they do the business here. Whom do all these goods belong to? and how do they sell them? We have not seen any body here that looks as if he was buying any thing."
"No," said Mr. George. "The merchants don't come here to buy the goods. They buy them by samples in the city. I will explain to you how they manage the business. The merchants who own ships send them to various parts of the world to buy what grows in the different countries and bring it here. We will take a particular case. Suppose it is coffee, for instance. The merchant never sees the coffee himself, perhaps. The captain or the supercargo reports to him how much there is, and he orders it to be stored in the warehouses here. Then he puts it into the hands of an agent to sell. His agent is called a broker. There are inspectors in the docks, whose business it is to examine the coffee and send specimens of it to the broker's office in the city. It is the same with all the other shiploads that come in. They are examined by inspectors, specimens are taken out and sent to the city, and the goods themselves are stored in the warehouses.
"Now, we will suppose a person wishes to buy some of these goods to make up a cargo. Perhaps it is a man who is going to send a ship to Africa after elephants' tusks, and he wants a great variety of goods to send there to pay the natives for them. He wants them in large quantities, too, enough to make a cargo. So he makes out a list of the articles that he wishes to send, and marks the quantities of each that he will require, and gives the list to the agent. This agent is a man who is well acquainted with the docks and the brokers, and knows where they keep the specimens. He buys the articles and sends them all on board the ship that is going to Africa, which is perhaps all this time lying close at hand in the docks, ready to receive them. As fast as the goods are delivered on board the African ship, the captain of it gives the agent a receipt for them, and the latter, when he has got all the receipts, sends them to the merchant; and so the merchant knows that the goods are all on board, without ever having seen any of them."
"And then he pays the agent, I suppose, for his trouble," said Rollo.
"Of course," said Mr. George; "but this is better than for him to attempt to do the business himself; for the agent is so familiar with the docks, and with every thing pertaining to them, that he can do it a great deal better than the merchant could, in half the time."