Manningtree lies at the very easternmost part of the estuary of the Stour--all these estuaries would be fjord-like if they had but higher banks--and is really quite close to our pretty Stratford St. Mary, on the Roman road between Ipswich and Colchester, as well as to Dedham and East Bergholt. From it we turn due east, and, the road following the estuary, proceed through Lawford, Mistley, and Bradfield, seven miles to Dovercourt and Harwich. There is a fairly sharp hill of 1 in 13 between Mistley and Bradfield, and another of 1 in 15 between Bradfield and Dovercourt. Mistley is part of the port of Manningtree, and its park, praised by Walpole, still survives sufficiently for the district to be most pleasantly clothed with trees. Dovercourt bulks large in the history of superstition, its church having possessed a peculiarly holy rood, to which pilgrimages used to be made. Now it is a suburb of Harwich, and Harwich, after many ups and downs, and in spite of the inroads of the sea, is doing fairly well. It was certainly a Roman station, it is, like Sole Bay, one of the few places on land from which naval battles of importance have been seen--one between Alfred and the Danes, and another against De Ruyter; it was the starting point of Frobisher on his voyage to find the North West Passage, and of Dr. Johnson for Leyden. All this, to render unto Cæsar the things which are his, I learn from "Murray." From the same source, too, it is gathered that the introduction of steamboats lost the port much of its trade, and that railways revived it. But this particular "Murray" is old (1875). Its views of commerce need bringing up to date; its views of the aspect of a seaport are not mine. One does not expect "sweetness and light," concerning the absence of which complaint is made, in a seaport devoted to fishing-boats and passenger traffic. I can see more of the picturesque in the narrow and struggling streets, in spite of some dirt, than the writer of 1875; but on me a port or a dock exercises a special and peculiar fascination, and that all the more when, as in the case of Harwich, its waters are the head-quarters of a Yacht Club.