BINNEY'S CASE.—2 BLAND. 147

nience; and therefore, in many instances, where it was practicable,
the navigation has been extended at an enormous expense to the
town or head of the port. Hale de Port Maris, 46. Anciently the
natural navigation of the River Ex, in England, was such, that
large ships went quite up to the City of Exeter; but a malicious
earl of Devon, by throwing darns across the river, entirely choked
the channel, so that ships were obliged to stop four miles below,
which place was, for a long time, considered as the port. But at
great expense the obstructions were removed, and now ships again
find *a port at the walls of the city. Malham's Naral Gaz.
v. Exeter. The City of Chester, in England, is situated on 157
the River Dee, the crooked channel of which had become so
choked up by washings from the land, that ships were obliged to
make a port eight miles below. But some time since, a new chan-
nel was cut for the river near the old one, and at a vast expense,
and ships now again go up to the port at the city. Rees' Cyclo.
Art. Canal.

The Severn, among the rivers of England, has, of old, been de-
nounced as ''amost wild, unruly river;'' its descending floods have,
at various times, swept along at such violence, and carried with
them such masses of earth as to entirely to fill up the former, and
excavate an altogether new channel in many spaces; and such is
the rage and impetuosity of the tide, whether of flood or ebb, that
no vessel ventures up it farther than King Eoad, near its conflu-
ence with the Avon, without a pilot. Hale de Jure Maris, 16, 34.
The chief ports on this river and its branches are Bristol and
Gloucester, up to each of which the tide flows; but to overcome the
dangers and difficulties of the natural access to them has called
forth the most powerful efforts of human ingenuity, aud the ex-
penditure of immense sums of money. About seventy acres of the
old and crooked course of the Avon was to be converted into a vast
dock at Bristol, into which ships were to be lifted by locks; and
into which also the boats of the Kennet and Avon Canal were to
be admitted. And a canal has been constructed for the passage of
ships, seventy feet wide and eighteen feet deep, from Berkley to
Gloucester, a distance of eighteen miles along the valley of the
river. Rees' Cyclo. Art. Canal.

These and a number of other examples that might be given,
may be regarded as extensions of tide navigation, so as to have a
port immediately at the city, which is the seat of the commerce.
The dangers, difficulties, and delays of the natural tide navigation
in some cases, and the expense and delay of transhipments and of
land transportation, in others, however short, were so very great
as to demonstrate the necessity and utility of having the port and
the town, or head of the port, immediately together. The termi-
nation of marine navigation, in relation to the matter now under
consideration, therefore, is not, in any case, the most interior tide