There is no busier harbour on the south coast than Portsmouth, for in it business and pleasure, war and peace, are indissolubly linked. On the eastern shore is the Naval Dockyard, the steamboat stages, and most of what commerce comes into the harbour; on the western, chiefly construction sheds, slips, fitting-out yards, and industries connected with the pleasure craft which, during the summer months, add such life and beauty to the Solent and home waters generally. The harbour itself simply teems with life. Not a moment passes throughout the hours of daylight that some craft or other--whether battleship, torpedo boat, destroyer, excursion steamer, yacht, or trading schooner, barque, brigantine, or rust-red collier--is entering or leaving it through the narrow jaws between Blockhouse Fort and Point Battery. A French writer has said “It is the one spot I have seen in England that impressed me with the tireless activity and sense of the nation’s naval greatness.” And after a few days spent in the harbour one realizes the truth of this statement. If making a lengthy stay one is scarcely likely to find anything approaching a snug berth nearer Gosport or the Hard than up a little distance beyond the entrance to Weevil Lake near the Coal Hulks. If fortunate enough to pick up a mooring buoy here, one is not too far removed from the life of the harbour, nor has one too long a pull down to Gosport or Portsmouth Hard. But now something concerning Portsmouth and its neighbouring town of Gosport. The name of the latter, a quaint old-fashioned town which is being slowly but surely absorbed by the Government needs, is traditionally supposed to have been derived from the words God’s Port, or the port of safety or deliverance, which was bestowed upon it by Henry of Blois, Bishop of Winchester, on his landing, A.D. 1158, after a perilous voyage from the coast of France. There is, however, another version of its origin, which, whilst stating that it was Henry of Blois that bestowed the name, gives as the reason the saving of his brother King Stephen’s life when the vessel in which he was returning from Normandy was wrecked on the coast near Stokes Bay. Actually, it would appear more probable that the name is derived from Gorseport, or the haven among the gorse, with which most of the dry land in the neighbourhood was formerly covered. There is, however, some authorities aver, amongst the archives in Winchester Cathedral a deed by which a grant was made to the inhabitants of the place, enabling them to call it God’s Port. One of the most remarkable features connected with the harbour is the number of villages which grew up on its shores with the names of which the word “port” became incorporated.