The geography books tell us that the River Clyde is 106 miles in length. But it is really very much longer than that, It runs round the whole earth, through all the oceans, and up every gulf and estuary on which the merchandise of the world is carried. Not asa stream, of course, but as an influence. And that influence takes the terrestrial form of ships. These ships, built on the Clyde, have a way of penetrating to every nook and cranny of the globe where there is sufficient depth of water to float them. It may, therefore, be said that the River Clyde flows round the world in the shape of staunch vessels, stout sailorman, and lean-jawed engineers.
In the yearly shipbuilding re turns you read of little ships that are built on the Clyde for traffic on the Yangtzckiang and the Amazon and the Congo and a score of other rivers with romantic names. "That perhaps ig all that strikes you. But you really ought to let y fancy roam a_ little farther, and follow in imagination these tiny sraft on their far travels. Take out the atlas and see where they go—up tropic streams so broad that the banks are but dimly seen from the midstream; under a copper_ sky through the arid plains of Baby-lonia: up the long winding rivers of China past canopied temples and luxuriant fields; even through the clinking ice of swift sub-Arctic streams. It may be Arabs, or. Chinese, or descendants of the Ineag who are in charge of the ships, and the wood burned may he chopped from trees that are unknown under our Northern skies. But yet they are little bits of Scotland, jetsam that Mother Clyde sends washing against the shores of the world.
It_is a fact to be proud of, this Clydeside influence on the mereantile marine of all the. seafaring nations. Many of us have seen it at ivory in the course of our travels, and home staying folk have eyes to read about it in books and newspapers. Who does not remember that favourite of Kipling's, Brugglesmith, the temulent boilermaker from the Clyde? Or the Brassbounder's account of the Arab merchant at Port Said, who introduced himself as "Jock Ferguson, b'lang Greenock"? What was it that made rainy Greenock known on the quayside of Port Said? It was her contributions to the wandering fleets that have had their birth on the stretch of river bank that runs from Gova to the Bay of Quick.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.