In Britain there were found to be advantages in having a port, not at the mouth of a river, but as far inland as the vessels employed could go. One of these advantages lay in the fact that, the further inland the river-port, the greater was the protection against the Danish or Norwegian pirates who, at one time, infested the seas around our shores; but the main reasons for the preference are somewhat quaintly expressed by "R. S.," in a pamphlet, published in 1675, entitled "Avona; or a Transient View of the Benefit of making Rivers of this Kingdom Available. Occasioned by observing the Scituation of the City of Salisbury, upon the Avon, and the Consequence of opening that River to that City." The writer says:-- "There is more advantage to those places, which, being seated far within the Land (as this[19] is), do enjoy the benefit of Commerce by Sea, by some Navigable River, than to those Port-Towns which are seated in some Creeke or Bay only, and are (as I may call it) Land-lock'd, having no passage up into the Land but by Carriages, as we see in Poole and Lynn, in Dorset, and in a number of other Port-Towns of like Scituation in other places quite round the Island: For such places, though the Sea brings in commodities to them, yet they can neither without great charge convey those commodities higher up into the Land, nor, without the like charge, receive the Innland commodities to export again: Whereas, Cities seated upon navigable Rivers far within the Land look like some Noble Exchange of Nature's own designing; where the Native and the Forreigner may immediately meet, and put off to each other the particular commodities of the growth of their own Countreys; the Native (as a Merchant) receiving the Forreign Goods at first hand, and exchanging his own for them at the {111}very place where they are made, or grow; or, at most, going no further to it, than to his ordinary Market." Thus the ideal river-ports were those that were situated, not only a good distance inland, but in close connection with a Roman or other road along which commerce could be readily brought or distributed, the land journey being reduced to the smallest and most convenient proportions. The advantage was still greater where the small sea-going vessels could be carried by a tidal stream right up to the town to which their cargo was consigned. As against these advantages, however, there was the disadvantage that, the further inland the river-port, the greater was the risk that access to it might become impracticable either through the formation of shallows in the river-bed or because the larger build of vessels in later years could not pass where the smaller and more primitive type of ship of earlier days had gone without difficulty.