No one who has not visited Canvey would believe that so lonely and out-of-the-world a spot could exist within thirty miles of London. Just as we sometimes find, within half-a-dozen paces of a great central city thoroughfare, where the black and pursuing streams of passengers who throng its pavements never cease to flow, and the roar of traffic is never still, some silent and unsuspected alley or court into which no stranger turns aside, and where any sound but that of a slinking footstep is seldom heard,--so, bordering the great world-thoroughfare of the Thames, is to be found a spot where life seems stagnant, and where scarcely one of the thousands who pass within a stone’s throw has ever set foot. Where the Thames swings round within sight of the sea, there lies, well out of the sweep of the current, a pear-shaped island, some six miles long and three miles broad, which is known as Canvey. Three hundred years ago it was practically uninhabitable, for at high tide the marshes were flooded by the sea, and it was not until 1623 that James I. invited a Dutchman named Joas Croppenburg and his friends to settle there, offering them a third for themselves if they could reclaim the island from the sea. This offer the enterprising Dutchman accepted, and immediately set to work to build a sea-wall, which so effectually protects the low-lying marsh-land, that, standing inside it, one seems to be at a lower level than the water, and can see only the topmost spars and sails of the apparently bodiless barges and boats which glide ghost-like by. But the most noticeable features in the scenery of Canvey are the evil-looking dynamite hulks which lie scowling on the water like huge black and red-barred coffins. Upwards of a dozen of these nests of devilry are moored off the island, and they are the first objects to catch the eye as one looks out from the sea wall. In view of the fact that the position of Canvey in regard to one of the greatest water highways in the world is like that of a house which lies only a few yards back from a main road, one wonders at first that such a locality should have been selected as the storage place of so vast a quantity of a deadly explosive. That it was so selected only after the matter had received the most careful and serious consideration of the authorities is certain; and though very nearly the whole of the shipping which enters the Thames must necessarily pass almost within hail of the island, the spot is so remote and out of the world that it is doubtful if any safer or securer place could have been found. The dynamite magazines consist, as the name indicates, of the dismantled hulks of old merchant vessels, which, though long past active service, are still water-tight. One man only is in charge of each hulk, which he is not supposed to leave, everything that he needs being obtained for him by the boatman, whose sole duty it is to fetch and carry for the hulk-keepers.