Page:The Galaxy, Volume 5.djvu/796

766 The late Peter Hastie, of New York, discovered above one thousand errors of spelling, punctuation, and syntax, in a so-called immaculate English edition of the Bible, and one-tenth that number of errata on two pages of a popular unabridged American dictionary. The only books that are believed to be perfect, i. e., entirely free from typographical errors, are an Oxford edition of the Bible, a London and Leipsic Horace, and an American reprint of Dante. The University of Oxford had a standing offer of a guinea for each and every error that might be found in their edition of the Holy Bible referred to above. For many years no one claimed the reward, until recently an erratum was discovered by a lynx-eyed reader, the reward duly paid, the error corrected, and it is now believed to be without a typographical blemish of any description.

HE five docks of London—the Commercial, East India, St. Katherine's, London, and West India—are the growth of the present century, constructed by private capital, and fairly remunerative to their owners.

Up to the year 1798, when London contained less than 500,000 inhabitants, merchandise, for want of room to store it, was kept afloat in barges. The plunder that took place is incredible. Lightermen, watermen, laborers, crews of ships, mates and captains, and even revenue officers, became a band of thieves. Neither the police force nor the most stringent laws were of avail. The construction of the Brunswick docks, afterward included in the East India, first opened the way for successfully meeting an evil that threatened the very existence of the commerce of the metropolis. Since then, during a period of nearly seventy years, that terra incognita to travellers—the east of London, where more than 500,000 people dependent upon daily manual labor find their homes, and within the area of which neither villa nor palatial mansion, planted square nor rural park is found, and through whose labyrinth of streets only poverty struggling for existence or at best the barest competence, can be seen—has been flanked on its southern side, where the Thames flows sluggishly toward the sea, by a continuous line of docks, capable of receiving 1,700 ships and storing 980,000 tons of merchandise. At a cost of £9,000,000 sterling, and by the employment of £36,000,000 of active capital, London has been made, for the keeping of imported goods, the safest port in the world. The lofty walls of these docks, the cast iron frontage of their quays, their vaults and warehouses, the huge machinery over the shafts, the locks and gates, swing bridges and cranes, the iron-framed and glass-framed roofs, the vats for mixing wines and kilns for burning condemned goods, the gate-paddles for filling the locks with water and the steam machinery for discharging them, go far to justify the cockney's boast, that "London is the emporium of nations."

It is a peculiar feature of the docks of London, that each is used for a special purpose that does not conflict with that of the others. The Commercial