EIGHTEEN miles of levee! London, with all the gloomy vastness of her docks, and her “river of the ten thousand masts,” can offer no spectacle of traffic so picturesquely attractive and so varied in its attraction.
In the center of this enormous crescent line of wharves and piers lie the great Sugar and Cotton Landings, with their millions of tons of freight newly unshipped, their swarms of swarthy stevedores, their innumerable wagons and beasts of burden. Above the line of depot and storehouse roofs, stretching southward, rises the rolling smoke of the cotton-press furnaces. Facing the Sugar Landing, stretching northward, extend a line of immense sugar sheds, with roofs picturesquely-peaked, Sierra-wise. Below, along the wooden levee, a hundred river boats have landed without jostling, and the smoky breath of innumerable chimneys floats, upward eddying, into the overarching blue. Here one sees a comely steamer from the Ohio lying at the landing, still panting, after its long run of a thousand miles; there a vast Mississippi boat lies groaning, with her cargo of seven thousand bales, awaiting relief by a legion of ’longshoremen. At intervals other vessels arrive, some, like mountains of floating cotton, their white sides hidden by brown ramparts of bales built up to the smokestacks; some deeply freighted with the sweet produce of the cane-fields. Black tugs rush noisily hither and thither, like ugly water-goblins seeking strong work to do; and brightly-painted luggers, from the lower coasts,—from the oyster beds and the fruit tree groves—skim over the wrinkled water, some bearing fragrant freight of golden oranges, and pomegranates, and bananas richly ripe; some bringing fishy dainties from the sea. Ocean steamers are resting their leviathan sides at the Southern piers, and either way, along the far-curving lines of wharves, deep-sea ships lie silently marshaled, their pale wings folded in motionless rest. There are barks and brigs, schooners and brigantines, frigates and merchantmen, of all tonnages—ships of light and graceful build, from the Spanish Main; deep-bellied steamers, with East Indian names, that have been to Calcutta and Bombay; strong-bodied vessels from Norway and all the Scandinavian ports; tight-looking packets from English ports; traders under German, Dutch, Italian, French and Spanish flags; barks from the Mediterranean; shapely craft from West Indian harbors. They seem envoys of the world’s commerce in sunny session at the Gate of the Tropics! Look either way along the river with a strong glass!—the fringe of masts and yards appears infinitely extended; the distant spars become blended together in a darkly outlined thicket of sharply-pointed strokes and thread, cutting the blue at all angles; further and further yet, the fringe seems but a fringe of needle points and fine cobweb lines; and, at last, only the points remain visible, the lines having wholly vanished.