The Southwark side was much more open, and parts of it were un-obstructed, so that Daniel, and grazing dairy-cows, could inspect each other across a few yards of water, mud, and turf. But just as the sloops and schooners were giving way to proper three-masted ships as they progressed down this stretch of the Pool, so the small wharves and warehouses of city merchants were being supplanted by vast flat yards that owned long swaths of the bank, big as battle-fields, and almost as noisy: the ship-yards. Some bloke at the Kit-Cat Clubb had tried to convince Daniel that there were now no fewer than two dozen ship-yards active along the edges of the Pool, and almost as many dry-docks. Daniel had only pretended to credit this, out of politeness. Now he believed. For what seemed like miles, the banks of the Thames were lined with enterprises that ate trees by the thousands and shit boats by the score. They spat out enough saw-dust and wood-shavings to safely pack St. Paul’s in a shipping-crate, supposing a crate that large could be built. Which it probably could, here. Certain things Daniel had been noticing suddenly became connected in his mind. The rafts of hardwood logs floating down the Charles, day after day, in Boston, and the fact that coal, its smoke, and its soot were everywhere in London now, both spoke of a desperate hunger for wood. The forests of Old and New England alike were being turned into fleets, and only a fool would burn the stuff.