NORTHFLEET.

THE County of Kent, from its contiguity to the shores of ancient Gaul, has been the theatre of many important actions in the early periods of English history. The opinion of many writers, that the station of the Romans, called Vagniacæ, was at Northfleet, or in its immediate vicinity, has received additional strength from the very interesting antiquities lately discovered at Southfleet, and described in the fourteenth volume of the Archælogia. The valley, called Ebbsfleet, by Philpot, was once covered with water, and being locked in on each side with hills, made a secure road for shipping, which induced the Danes to make it a winter station for their navy. This valley has been gained from the river by an embankment, "thrown up and maintained at the charge of the county, to stop its farther progress, which, however, it cannot do at certain extraordinary high tides*." The chalk works, and the contiguity of the village to the Watling-street of the Romans, have probably made it a settlement of the earliest antiquity in this county. The church exhibits many ancient and curious monuments: but a subject more interesting to the present, and future generarations, is the docks of Thomas Pitcher, Esq. which afford the most striking example of individual enterprise on the banks of the Thames. In the year 1782, this place presented a barren waste of chalky cliffs, from seventy to eighty feet perpendicular; but after a great expense and trouble, part of it was formed into a dock in 1788, and a ship of 1200 tons built for the East India Company's service therein. Since that period the premises have been made capable of building four of the largest ships in the Royal Navy at one time. They extend 1000 feet in front of the river, with a flow of water twenty feet deep, the foundation of the slips

*Hasted's Kent.

and docks being of solid chalk. There is also a double dry dock, capable of holding two first rates at the same time; a single dock that will hold the largest ship in the East India Company's service, and a wet dock containing three acres and a half. The whole of these important works comprise an extent of nearly twenty acres.

The ridge of chalk left standing between the two great excavations, and seen in the view, appears to have been left for the convenience of a nearer communication with the river side.