Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 37, Number 26, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 April 1905 — OLD THAMES’ DOCKS. [ARTICLE]

OLD THAMES’ DOCKS.

Local Color of London River the Product of Many Years’ Growth. The absence of picturesqueness cannot be laid to the charge of the docks opening into the Thames. For all my unkind comparisons to swans and backyards, says a writer in the MetroMj|MaM[ niH dIH Gifl aiH rrfl gle line of rails in tJe whole of their area and -with the scent of spices lingering over the muddy pavement between its warehouses witn the farfamed wine cellars, down through the interesting group of West India docks, the fine docks of Blackwall, on past the Galleons Reach entrance of the Victoria and Albert docks—right down to the vast gloom of the great basins in Tilbury, each of these places of restraint for ships has its own peculiar physiognomy of aspect and expression. And what makes tneni unique and attractive is their common trait of being romantic in their usefulness. In their way they are as romantic as the river is unlike all the other commercial streams of the world. The coziness of the St. Catherine’s dock, the old-world air of the London docks remain impressed upon the memory. The docks down the river abreast of Woolrich are imposing by their proportions and the vast scale of the ugliness ' that forms their Surroundings, ugliness so picturesque as to become a delight to the eye. When one talks of the Thames docks, beauty Is a vain word, but romance has lived too long upon tlds river not to have thrown a mantle of glamour upon its banks.