Every British manufacturer and
wholesale dealer had his counting-house and depot at Helgoland. Vast
warehouses, resembling palaces, rose on the plateau of the island,
and approaching ships beheld them from afar. In these warehouses
were stored all the articles which British industry was able to
offer to the rest of Europe, and which the people of the whole
continent desired the more ardently, the more rigorously they were
forbidden to purchase them. A very large commercial firm of London
and Manchester had branches of their business on the island; every
wealthy banker had an office there, and people were justified in
calling Helgoland "Little London." You would have thought yourself
in the city of London, when passing through the narrow streets of
the island, lined on both sides with vast warehouses, and reading on
each the names of the most celebrated London firms. You would almost
have fancied you were in the gigantic harbor of the Thames, when
looking at the forest of masts, the animated crowds, the ships and
boats, where from three to four hundred vessels cleared and entered
every day.
Not only merchants and smugglers, adventurers and speculators,
flocked to Helgoland, but diplomatists, politicians, and patriots
found on the rocky island a refuge and convenient point, where they
might meet their brethren and reunite kindred hearts.
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