Cotton Author:John Mortimer Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: for removal in the way of ballast for outward bound ships. Three miles or more away from Eastham locks, the mariner comes to Ellesmere Port, where the Shropsh... more »ire Union Canal enters the new waterway, and where arrangements have been made in the embankment on the river side for the admission and outflow of the Mersey tide. With its warehouses, its quays and wharves, its foreground of masts and background of clustered habitations, Ellesmere Port seems sufficiently alive, and an added importance is given by a large iron floating graving dock, which was towed here from Newcastle-upon- Tyne, where it was built. Passing along, through a pleasant landscape, when it is visible over the bank, our ship moves to Saltport, ten miles distant from Eastham. You may look in vain upon any save a Ship Canal map for the name of this new port, which was only christened in July, 1892, but which is already picturesque and of growing importance. At this point the Weaver navigation has access to the canal, and here the passer-bysees an open expanse of marsh-like land, a sloppy-looking area, stretching to the higher ground and tracked by a waterway showing suggestions of sluices and locks. In the foreground, on a point of land where a channel of the Weaver water comes out upon the canal among much rude timber work, there is a wooden structure of a very primitive type, such as one might find in some new settlement. This building is noteworthy, inasmuch as it is the earnest of more important ones to come. In its rude simplicity it stands representative of the Salt- port of to-day, and the rest is in the undeveloped future. If you land to inspect it, you will find it divided in its length by a long narrow passage, with rooms on either side, and upon some of these are the names of ship-brokers. But the r...« less