The preparations began at once. The port chosen for the flotilla was Boulogne; but the whole coast from Antwerp to the mouth of the Seine bristled with iron and bronze. Between Calais and Boulogne, at Cape Gris Nez, where the navigation was the most dangerous, the batteries literally touched one another. Fifty thousand men were put to work at the stupendous excavations necessary to make the ports large enough to receive the flotilla. Large numbers of troops were brought rapidly into the neighborhood: fifty thousand men to Boulogne, under Soult; thirty thousand to Etaples, under Ney; thirty thousand to Ostend, under Davoust; reserves to Arras, Amiens, Saint-Omer. The work of preparing the flat-bottomed boats, or walnut-shells, as the English called them, which were to carry over the army, went on in all the ports of Holland and France, as well as in interior towns situated on rivers leading to the sea. The troops were taught to row, each soldier being obliged to practise two hours a day so that the rivers of all the north of France were dotted with land-lubbers handling the oar, the most of them for the first time. In the summer of 1803, Napoleon went to the north to look after the work. His trip was one long ovation. _Le Chemin d’Angleterre_ was the inscription the people of Amiens put on the triumphal arch erected to his honor, and town vied with town in showing its joy at the proposed descent on the old-time enemy. Such was the interest of the people, that a thousand projects were suggested to help on the invasion, some of them most amusing. In a learned and thoroughly serious memorial, one genius proposed that while the flotilla was preparing, the sailors be employed in catching dolphins, which should be shut up in the ports, tamed, and taught to wear a harness, so as to be driven, in the water, as horses are on land. This novel power was to transport the French to the opposite side of the Channel. Napoleon occupied himself not only with the preparations at Boulogne and with keeping Nelson busy elsewhere. Every project which could possibly facilitate his undertaking or discomfit his enemies, he considered. Fulton’s diving boat, the “Nautilus,” and his submarine torpedoes, were at that time attracting the attention of the war departments of civilized countries. Already Napoleon had granted ten thousand francs to help the inventor. From the camp at Boulogne he again ordered the matter to be looked into. Fulton promised him a machine which “would deliver France and the whole world from British oppression.” [Illustration: GRAY REDINGOTE AND PETIT CHAPEAU WORN BY NAPOLEON.]