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sixty-six feet, it is firm enough to bear up fortresses strong as human
engineering can rear. This is the famous _digue_ of Cherbourg. Its
construction has been a seventy years' battle with the elements. Many
times the waves have destroyed the work of years. Once a furious tempest
swept away the whole superstructure, with its forts, armaments,
barracks, and even garrison. But failure has only awakened fresh energy,
and it stands now complete and rooted in the sea like a reef. At each
end of the _digue_, between it and the main land, are broad
ship-channels, affording a free passage at all tides to the largest
ships. Thus science has called into existence a safe harbor, protected
from the assaults of the sea by its granite barrier,--protected none the
less from man's assaults by the concentric fire of more than six hundred
guns.

This is but the exterior of Cherbourg. In the bosom of the rocky cliffs
of its western shore three basins or docks have been hewn with gigantic
toil. The first, finished in 1813, is 950 feet long, 768 feet wide, and
55 feet deep, and will hold securely fifteen ships of the line. The
second, of somewhat smaller dimensions, was completed in 1829, and will
float a dozen ships. The third, far larger than either, was opened with
great ceremony in 1858: it is 1365 feet long, 650 feet wide, and 60 feet
deep, and will contain eighteen or twenty ships of the largest size. On
the sides of these basins are twelve building-slips and seven docks. And
radiating from them, and in close contiguity, are arsenals, storehouses,
timber-yards, ropewalks, sail-lofts, bakeries, and machine-shops capable
of turning out marine engines, anchors, cables, and indeed every piece
of iron-work which enters into the construction of a ship. It is no vain
boast that an army of a hundred thousand men can be embarked any fine
morning at Cherbourg, and that the fleet necessary for its transport can
be built and armed and equipped and protected to the hour of its
departure in this fortified haven.

Yet Cherbourg is but one of five ports equally efficient, equally
protected, and equally furnished with the products of mechanic and
nautical invention. Brest, L'Orient, and Rochefort, on the west, have
far greater natural and scarcely less acquired advantages; while the old
port of Toulon on the Mediterranean, old only in name, has been so
enlarged and strengthened, that it can supply for the southern waters
all and more than Cherbo