The London, Brighton, & South Coast page 5

Newhaven is a town made by the wind, for the big storm of 1570 turned away the River Ouse from its old outlet at Seaford into its present mouth under Burrow Head. It is the nearest Channel port to London, being only fifty-seven miles from " The Bridge." The harbour with its two fine piers and concrete breakwater, made on the wholesale principle by which some twenty truckloads of shingle and sand were mixed at a time with 120 sacks of cement and dropped into the water, is accessible at all states of the tide, and yearly becomes busier, for the amount of French merchandise that comes to it through Dieppe and Caen seems to be endowed with the valuable quality of perpetual growth.

The harbour, though the property of a separate company, is the chief port of the line, the headquarters of its maritime interests, from which the excellent steamers, owned jointly by the Brighton company and the French State Railways, take you across the Channel at over twenty knots, the two turbines, Dieppe and Brighton, travelling at twenty-two or over, and start you through that delightful stretch of French scenery that seems but a bit of Dorking and Shere, and thereabouts, on the other side.