Passing Erith on the Kent coast, and Dagenham and Barking on the Essex, we come to the point where London really begins on its eastward side. From now onwards on each bank there is one long, winding line of commercial buildings, backed in each case by a vast and densely-populated area. On the southern shore come Plumstead and Woolwich, to be succeeded in continuity by Greenwich, Deptford, Rotherhithe, and Bermondsey; while on the northern side come in unbroken succession North Woolwich, Canning Town, and Silvertown (backed by those tremendous new districts—East and West Ham, Blackwall and Poplar, Millwall, Limehouse, Shadwell, and Wapping). In all the eleven miles or so from Barking Creek to London Bridge there is nothing to see but shipping and the things appertaining thereto—great cargo-boats moving majestically up or down the stream, little tugs fussing and snorting their way across the waters, wind-jammers of all sorts and sizes dropping down lazily on the tide, small coastal steamers, ugly colliers, dredgers, businesslike Customs motor-boats and River Police launches, vast numbers of barges, some moving beautifully under their own canvas, some being towed along in bunches, others making their way painfully along, propelled slowly by their long sweeps; there is nothing to hear but the noises of shipping—the shrill cry of the syren, the harsh rattling of the donkey-engines, the strident shouts of the seamen and the lightermen. Everything is marine, for this is the Port of London. [Illustration: London’s Giant Gateway] Here where the River winds in and out are the Docks, those tremendous basins which have done so much to alter the character of London River during the last hundred years, that have shifted the Port of London from the vicinity of London Bridge and the Upper Pool, and placed it several miles downstream, that have rendered the bascules of that magnificent structure, the Tower Bridge, comparatively useless things, which now require to be raised only a very few times in the course of a day. In its course from the mouth inwards to the Port the River is steadily narrowing. At Yantlet Creek the stream is about four-and-a-half miles across; but in the next ten miles it narrows to a width of slightly under 1,300 yards at Coalhouse Point at the upper end of the Lower Hope Reach. At Gravesend the width is 800 yards, at Blackwall under 400, while at London Bridge the width at high tide is a little less than 300 yards. [Illustration: THE POOL.]