The vessel lies with her bowsprit projecting over the quay, moored as a boat run ashore on the quiet sandy beach of a lake, not as a ship is generally placed with her broadside to the quay wall or to the pier. Her stern is yonder--far out in the waters of the dock, too far to concern us much as we look from the verge of the wall. Access to the ship is obtained by a wooden staging running out at the side; instead of the ship lying beside the pier, a pier has been built out to fit to the ship. This plan, contrary to preconceived ideas, is evidently founded on good reason, for if such a vessel were moored broadside to the quay how much space would she take up? There would be, first, the hull itself say eighty yards, and then the immense bowsprit. Two or three such ships would, as it were, fill a whole field of water; they would fill a whole dock; it would not require many to cover a mile. By placing each stem to the quay they only occupy a space equal to their breadth instead of to their length. This arrangement, again, tends to deceive the eye; you might pass by, and, seeing only the bow, casually think there was nothing particular in it. Everything here is on so grand a scale that the largest component part is diminished; the quay, broad enough to build several streets abreast; the square, open stretches of gloomy water; and beyond these the wide river. The wind blows across these open spaces in a broad way--not as it comes in sudden gusts around a street corner, but in a broad open way, each puff a quarter of a mile wide. The view of the sky is open overhead, masts do not obstruct the upward look; the sunshine illumines or the cloud-shadows darken hundreds of acres at once. It is a great plain; a plain of enclosed waters, built in and restrained by the labour of man, and holding upon its surface fleet upon fleet, argosy upon argosy. Masts to the right, masts to the left, masts in front, masts yonder above the warehouses; masts in among the streets as steeples appear amid roofs; masts across the river hung with drooping half-furled sails; masts afar down thin and attenuated, mere dark straight lines in the distance. They await in stillness the rising of the tide.