But the Ships! Who shall describe those white-sailed camels? who shall tell in graphic words of the fantastic interlacing of their masts and rigging, of the pitchy burliness of their bulging sides; of the hives of human ants who in barges and lighters surround them, or swarm about their cargo-cumbered decks? Strange sight to see, these mariners from every quarter of the globe; of every variety of stature and complexion, from the swarthy Malay to the almost albino Finn; in every various phase of picturesque costume, from the Suliote of the fruitship, in his camise and capote, to the Yankee foremast-man in his red shirt, tarry trousers, and case-knife hung by a strand of lanyards to his girdle. But not alone of the maritime genus are the crowds who throng the docks. There are lightermen, stovedores, bargees, and “lumpers;” there are passengers flocking to their narrow berths on board emigrant ships; there are entering and wharfingers’ clerks travelling about in ambulatory counting-houses mounted on wheels; there are land rats and water rats, ay, and some that may be called pirates of the long-shore, and over whom it behoves the dock policemen and the dock watchmen to exercise a somewhat rigid supervision—for they will pick and steal, these piratical ne’er-do-weels, any trifle, unconsidered or not, that comes handy to their knavish digits; and as they emerge from the dock-gates, it is considered by no means a breach of etiquette for an official to satisfy himself, by a personal inspection of their garments, that they don’t happen to have concealed about them, of course by accident, such waifs and strays as a bottle of Jamaica rum, a lump of gutta percha, a roll of sheet copper, or a bundle of Havannah cigars.