by the neutrals whose lucrative trade was summarily interrupted.  The traffic in vessels of any considerable size, sea-going vessels, soon ceased, and Nelson entertained at first great hopes of decisive results from the course adopted by him.  “We have much power here at present to do great things, if we know how to apply it,” he wrote, after being ten days on the ground; and at the end of a month, “The strong orders which I judged it proper to give on my first arrival, have had an extraordinary good effect; the French army is now supplied with almost daily bread from Marseilles; not a single boat has passed with corn.”  The enemy themselves admitted the stringency of their situation.  But Nelson had yet to learn how ingenuity and enterprise could find a way of eluding his care.  The coasting-trade soon began to take on a large development.  The Spaniards, now at peace with France, supplied Marseilles, and from both that port and Genoa grain was carried by small boats, that could be moved by oar as well as sail, could hug closely the rocky shore, and run readily under the batteries with which the French had covered the small bays of the western Riviera, whither the cruisers could not follow.  The operations of the latter, dependent only upon their canvas, could not always be extended to within easy gunshot of the beach, along which the blockade-runners kept, usually under cover of night.

Hence, although seriously inconvenienced, the French did not find their position untenable.  There were two ways by which the pressure might be increased.  A flotilla of small vessels, similar to the coasters themselves, but armed and heavily manned, might keep close in with the points which the latter had to round, and prevent their passage; but the British had no such vessels at their disposal, and, even if they had, the operations would be exposed to danger from the weather upon a hostile, iron-bound coast, whose shelter was forbidden them by the enemy’s guns.  The Neapolitans had such a flotilla, and it seems probable that its co-operation was asked, for Nelson speaks of it as a desirable aid on the 23d of August; but it did not actually join him until the 15th of September, when the season for its acting was almost past.  “Had I the flotilla,” wrote he, “nothing should be on this coast.  A few weeks more and they will not stay a night at sea to save an empire.”  Prior to its arrival the British attempted to harass the traffic with their ships’ boats, but these were undecked, and of limited capacity compared to those against which they were to act.  They were occasionally successful, but the results were too uncertain and hazardous to warrant perseverance, although Bonaparte had to admit that “The audacity of the English boats and the indolence of the Genoese, who allow their own vessels to be taken in their own roads, make it necessary to erect a battery for hot shot at a proper point, which you will exact shall be done by the governor of San Remo.”