But these are only the docks on the left bank of the river; on the other side, docks extend from Rotherhithe to Deptford; the Surrey Docks, the Commercial Docks, and the East Country Docks. When the gigantic extent of these docks, and the mass of property in them, are considered, Tyre and Sidon shrink up into utter insignificance. But of all these astonishing places, our present attention is devoted only to the London Docks, properly so called, as being connected with the operations of the Queen's Pipe; the damaged and unsalable goods of these docks being its food. In these docks are especially warehoused wine, wool, spices, tea, ivory, drugs, tobacco, sugars, dye-stuffs, imported metals, and sundry other articles. Except the teas and spices, you may procure inspection of all these articles, as they lie in their enormous quantities, by a ticket from the secretary. If you wish to taste the wines, you must have a tasting order for the purpose. Imagine yourselves, then, entering the gateway of the London Docks. If you wish only to walk round and see the shipping, and people at work, you can do that without any order. As you advance, you find yourself surrounded right and left by vast warehouses, where numbers of people, with carts and trucks, are busily at work taking in and fetching out goods. On your right you soon pass the ivory warehouse, where no lady is admitted except by a _special_ order. The cause of this singular regulation, by no means complimentary to the fair sex, we were unable to ascertain. No lady could very well be suspected of carrying off in her muff an elephant's tooth of some hundred weight, but there must have been female thieves, dexterous enough to secrete, perhaps a rhinoceros's tooth, of perhaps some dozen pounds, valued at one pound seven shillings per pound; and thus contrived to bring a stigma on the whole sex. Vast heaps of ivory lie on the floor of this warehouse, in huge elephants' tusks, of from twenty to a hundred pounds weight each; tusks of rhinoceros, and the ivory weapons of sword-fish and sea-unicorns. Here lay, on our last visit, the African spoils of Mr. Gordon Cumming; and, indeed, the spectacle is one that carries you away at once to the African deserts, and shows you what is going on there while we are quietly and monotonously living at home.