Here is Cooling Marsh with its quaint, fourteenth-century relic, Cooling Castle Gatehouse, built at the time of the Peasants’ Revolt, when the rich folk of the land found it expedient to do little or nothing to aggravate the peasantry. The builder, Sir John de Cobham, realizing the danger, saw fit to attach to one of the towers of his stronghold a plate, to declare to all and sundry that there was in his mind no thought other than that of protection from some anticipated foreign incursions. This plate is still in position on the ruin, and reads: “Knowyth that beth and schul be That I am mad in help of the cuntre In knowyng of whyche thyng Thys is chartre and wytnessynge.” According to Dr. J. Holland Rose, the authority on Napoleonic subjects, it was at a spot somewhere along this little stretch that Napoleon at the beginning of the last century proposed to land one of his invading columns. Other columns would land at various points on the Essex and Kent coasts, and all would then converge on London, the main objective. In fact, the Thames Estuary was such a vulnerable point that it occupied a considerable position in the scheme of defence drawn up for Pitt by the Frenchman Dumouriez. Gravesend itself from the River is not by any means an ill-favoured place, despite its rather commercial aspect. Backed by the sloping chalk hills, and with a goodly number of trees breaking up the mass of its buildings, it presents a tolerably picturesque appearance. Particularly is it a welcome sight to those returning to England after a long voyage, for it is frequently the first English town seen at all closely. [Illustration: Gravesend] At Gravesend the ships, both those going up and those going down, take aboard their pilots. The Royal Terrace Pier, which is the most prominent thing on Gravesend river front, is the headquarters of the two or three hundred navigators whose business it is to pilot ships to and from the Port of London, or out to sea as far as Dungeness on the south channel, or Orfordness, off Harwich, on the north channel. These men work under the direction of a “ruler,” who is an official of Trinity House, the corporation which was founded at Deptford in the reign of Henry VIII., and which now regulates lighthouses, buoys, etc. Gravesend is famous for two delicacies, its shrimps and its whitebait, and the town possesses quite a considerable shrimp-fishing fleet.