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I THE GREAT ARTIFICIAL- WATERWAYS OF THE WORL D I IF THE recommendation of the isth mian commission is to be adopted, sooner or later it would seem that the backbone of the American continent is to be divided and the long promised ranal connecting the waters of the At lantic and Pacific become an accom plished fact. Viewed in the light not only of recent but ancient history, whatever may be the outcome of the latest investigation, there is no , doubt that the American interoceanic canal hy some route is an eventuality of the future comparatively near, taking into account the gigantic nature of the task and the necessity for careful prepara tion. Although it was well within the pres ent century that the TTnited States gov ernment had its attention directed to the feasibility of a. transisthmian canal and only in 1S05 that the famous sci entist Von Humboldt declared it prac ticable, yet nearly 400 years have pass ed since the search for a waterway con necting the two oceans was first be srun. Christopher Columbus was look ing for it in 1502, and it was the impel ling motive of Vasco Nunez de Balboa, when, Sept. 26, 1513. "silent upon a peak In Darien," he, first of all Europeans, looked upon the waters of the Pacific. The centennial of canalization in the I'nited States was celebrated in 1S92, for it was in 1792 that two short canals were opened on the Connecticut river in Massachusetts Put George Washing ton has been called the "father of the canal system' in our country, owing to his early and persistent advocacy of an artificial waterway to connect the Po tomac and the Great lakes, which di rectly resulted in the Chesapeake and Ohio canal and indirectly, it is claimed, in the Rrie. President Madison urged the uniting of the great lakes with the Mississippi river by a ship canal suita ble for light draft war vessels, which X in A syiQ lere The Of the When The VPil If all ff..t ll vavtt I IV.. i The I He taught1 Love ind that If wealth Or ease rank rMor oy XN5 Till was ultimately carried out in the great Chicago drainage canal in more recent times. While we have, it is estimated, more than 5,000 miles of canals within the limits of the United States, none is large enough to float modern warships of deep draft or vessels intended for transoceanic commerce. There are more than a dozen canals of over 100 miles each in length which are entitled to the designation ""great." Heading the list is the famous Erie, 360 "miles, connecting Buffalo and the Hud son river. All these, however, are of comparatively shallow depth, and few are capable of being enlarged to meet the demands of the times as ship ca nals. The short but important Sault Ste; Marie, connecting Lakes Superior and Huron, has been enlarged and deepen ed since its original construction in 1S35, and the Canadian canal, the Wel land, between Lakes Erie and Ontario, has also been made deep enough for gunboats and most war vessels.. In the proposed ship canal connecting the St. Lawrence and Lake Huron by way of the Ottawa and French rivers, the Ca nadian government will possess a work of inestimable value which may change the balance of trade considerably in its favor. The really great undertaking for this government to prosecute, many noted engineers have averred, is a ship canal to parallel our Atlantic coast from Bos ton or the north shore of Cape Cod to New Orleans or Galveston, cutting across the Massachusetts peninsula, passing through Long Island sound, be hind the New Jersey toast. Cape Hat teras, etc., through the marsh regions of Georgia and across the peninsula of Florida to the gulf of Mexico. Such a cjnal, they say, could be provided at comparatively small expense and with out a lock the entire distance. At least S CHRIST is Poem by Neil Macdonald (Cw'lM. 1900, kr Rett MactnuM.) princely gifts upon His cot were inatrioir angelic airs seraphic played. sl'ns forecast the ills of coming was no presage or mat racerui crucifixion, or the stranger's tomb. dismay that filled all hearts with the earth shook, mid universal fhah hfrfp hh Fnriir From mir Obscures in love, for who would dare The toilsome journey that's outlined for! the future ills of life they knew? , 1.1 ' l c li 1 I v w I I J IVO J j Vf V I V II Ivl I 1 fiery ordeal which before Him though He shrank from ills that lewent where love and dutyTea us, love should dominate the mat forgives, would fain forget a the kind end tender ever find Jdys-wh.'ch to selfish persons ne'er were requisite for highest need. untroubled led us near to God. Christ would have traced some (other Our halting footsteps than the road and pride and grandeur of the The Mammon power to which the servile kneel were naught to Him who chose a low! estate And on man's toil put His upproving seal. The poor man's Christ, for poverty He knew In birth, in life, in death, rebuked the pride I hat measures men by standard of the the worth which will God s t ' TOPEK A ST ATE JOURNAL, SAT UTID AY EVENING, DECEMBER 22, 1900 "Kindle the Christmas brand and then Till sunneset let it burner Which quencht, then lay Jt up agen, one plucky American demonstrated the feasibility of passing from the St. Law rence to the gulf of Mexieo nearly all the way by natural water courses and inlets, when Mr. Nathaniel H. Bishop made his wonderful voyage of nearly 5,000 miles in a paper canoe. In the old world, attempts at canaliza tion were made many centuries prior to the discovery of the new world, unless we take into consideration the weak ef forts of the peoples anciently dwelling here and who are now extinct. Artifi cial waterways, in fact, are of almost, if not quite, equally ancient origin with roadways on land, having probably been originally constructed for irriga tion and secondarily for transportation purposes. The first ship canal or wa terway of magnitude was probably As syrian, but the Egyptians and the Chi nese possessed some canals of note, for pretty reliable evidence has been ad duced to show that Egypt once united the waters of the Red sea and the Med iterranean by digging across the isth mus of Suez, while China today pos sesses its Grand canal, over 1,000 miles long, which is said to have taken 120 years to build. Passing to other worlds, do not the astronomers tell us that there are ca nals in the planet Mars, by means of which it is hoped to secure ultimate communication with the remote Mar tians, using them as the basis of sig naling through ethereal space? The largest ship canal in Europe until quite recently was that which placed Amsterdam, Holland. in connection with the North sea. This has a length of 51 miles, a surface width of 124 f?it and a depth of 18 feet, permitting the passage of 1,400 ton ships. In Great Britain there are more than 2,000 miles of canals, but until the great waterway was opened to Manchester a few years ago, the largest work of the kind there was the Caledonian canal, which had a laic time year. fear gloor Uin pursueyv) men.fWy?, 1 1 f 3 . ' J . WH iC lay. woul way. ti ind. belong. path to lea He trod. drear. J'ew Wrong. A jn Christmas next returne" A Jolly S of1?- ff1 ts ;i i ... Photo by Mellen, Clucago. total length of 60 miles ajid a depth of 20 feet. The Manchester canal stands unique in the history of artificial waterways, since it was dug: to connect with the sea a city without a harbor. It is 30 miles long-, has an unobstructed channel 2S feet deep and cost more than $75,000,000, the estimate having been $45,000,000. As an example of enterprise on the part of merchants and manufacturers, this attempt to convert an inland city into a maritime metropolis to bring the ships to the factories rather than re move the latter to the coast is almost unprecedented. , - .. . In France the Canal du Midi, con structed more than 200 years ago, is 150 miles long and 60 feet wide, but not over seven feet. deep. A ship canal is, however, projected to unite the waters of the Loire and the Rhone, thus con necting the Atlantic and the Mediterra nean. It w ill shorten the distance, say, between London and India, by at least 1,000 miles, but it will also take away British prestige by leaving Gibraltar high and dry and no longer the key to the Mediterranean. What is likely to be the longest canal in the world is that projected across Russia from the Baltic to the Black sea. a distance of 700 miles as the crow flies and about 1.000 as canal and rivers must run. By means of this ca nal Russia would be made independent of Turkey and all other powers in fact, for it is intended to cut it to a depth sufficient to permit the passage of the largest battleships. It is to be 200 ffet wide at surface, 115 at bottom and 27 feet in depth. Its cost is estimated at from $93,000,000 to $100,000,000, but will probably exceed even the larger figures. The German government, as is well known, has been Indefatigable in canal digging, its latest great work being the famous Kiel-North sea canal, which is 64 miles in length and about 30 feet deep and cost nearly $40,000,000. It was opened in 1S95 with briliiant ceremonies, the emperor himself presiding, when a procession of merchant steamers and warships sailed through, taking five hours to pass a given point. - It is believed that all the greater works of this character have been cited, except, of course, that most famous of all, the Suez canal, the history of which is well known. A ship canal may have anciently connected the waters of the Mediterranean and the Red seas; but if so It had been filled up and abandoned for nearly 1,100 years when Ie Lesseps took hold of the more modern enter prise. The first of modern surveys of this route for a canal were made under orders of Napoleon I during his inva sion of Egypt, but the reports of his engineers in making the level of the Cbristro&5 AVorpirpg Group. ' si? T '"7- x J - s. - f h r S Red sea 30 feet higher than that of the Mediterranean were found to be erro neous by a combined survey of French, English and Austrian engineers in 1847, when the true level was ascertained. M. De Lesseps secured a concession for the canal in 1854, and a company was ors-anized in 185S, with exclusive guar antees for 99 years. His original esti mate was $10,000,000 for the total work, but when it was completed, in 1S69, its real cost amounted to J99.000.000. Yet even on this vast sum it is said to have paid a good profit, though the original stockholders may not have shared in U. In its length of about 100 miles about 75 miles were land excavation and 25 miles traversed the lakes. Its width at sur face averages 325 feet, at bottom 72, while the depth is 26 feet. Recurring now to the ship canil that comes neareft home to the pros;e- tive cut across some portion of Central America it may be noted that four routes have been in view for many years. These were, first, across the isthmus of Tehuantepec, in Mexieo; second, along the southern frontier of Nicaragua; third, across the isthmus of Panama, and, fourth, across Darien. The first has been pronounced imprac ticable owing to diplomatic as well as physical obstacles in the way, though it is in some respects admirable. It is 130 miles from east to west side, With an ascent to 6S0 feet, and the river Co atzacoalcos extends three-fourths the way across. Surveys have been carried on in a desultory manner by the United States government during the past 40 or 50 years, and the engineers have finally settled upon the very routes chosen more than 300 years ago. Though a route across Darien, to the south of Panama, has been frequently advocat ed, the final choice now lies between Nicaragua and Panama. The distances between ports of the north Atlantic and Pacific coasts are approximately the same via either Panama or Nica ragua, each section having its compen sations and disadvantages. Panama, as all the world knows, has already been exploited to a greater extent than Nicaragua. De Lessees' original esti mate was $240,000,000, and actual work was begun in 1S&1, but it is said that from $250,000,000 to $300,000,000 have al ready been expended, and that at least $150,000,000 will be necessary to finish the work, which is not more than half or two-thirds completed. In Panama the Culebra mountain, 400 feet high, and the intermittently torrential Cha gres river, with its deadly fevers, are the two chief deterrents to successful operations. Without entering into a discussion of the respective advantages of eithtr , ' i t A !r"l!f S S r.' . .-j.'- ------ .- ' f ' s Coprriprht, ISO, by Parkinson Co., Nirw York. "WASN'T SANTA CUAUS GOOD TO AE?' route, of the Nh nmnuun ii m:iv l salely asserted that it is cnn!fi;ir;ua;v healthful. Tlie i lii.'f .bie t inns to ii ti i lt- length strut rtie rifvntion of Hi country throui;li uliiili the ;m.il m u-t pass. As a-:tinst only rnii'-n and it,--poswlbillry of :i i-r;i K-i-i-l caisl at I'm. atlia'. there mi- tli iliMain-- of I Mi Kiiles and an alt it ml" !' 1 lt 'iot. pitating mini-r)tt 1m Us. in N't';it iii: ! Th"i pre nti ihsi.:il I -i ilii' cannot be orer, ith". ;,s i.h cointniKsions ha" r-Hiti-d, lui t-n.M i,kih expcmlil in es ill hi- rci'iir tiiimtcs vvryinx all the way fnmi 1 .''. OoO.Ooo to :'"..-. lit .M". ulii.h l.itK-r 'i that of the li-t ii ml "iiKist x lia n -;t i survey ever l t i I tml. This , nniH'--. however, was ha d nmui a ( fin.il i' 25 feet deep, In Humiliation .!' tmu --fxigi'ni'i,-s; hut if thi E- I ! ! reduced to fci-t a n'iin nf m i ! i'-1 J ;0.0O0.0M) cculd h" (.,! Tin- it" t'anary loiku ami an Imrai ns" il.im m imnountliiig th a!"i-s i.f th" .an Jinn river make this roiitf t ' - r - Hvp. prohSf.'y, Unit rout.l l- v-i. ..M. but, on t'Cc nthi'f haml. its h T t w.. a ic and topmrrnpliic aw !! as cim. advantages, arc ind is pu t a hi,-, wp't a larRa ant di-ti la K" t N i:n t a;;u.i V n ' a elevation tyf ovfr Ih f..,t a l-n r- .a I. -el and h perpetual stii't'ly of xsatfi as ily controlled. ' Taken ail 'in Jl iiml Hfier v Ic ,. ) in the evidence pro ami enn, it apj.'-ai that the hi can il to cntn t i he nn great oceans of ihe fiiinre wit f.roiiHhlv pass over tit' Nmarm-'na route. The following tahle oi cmri t-a i a t i distances shows t h" tiumher ,r nii. In water travel saved by- the of h- tial routes built and ro j.vfd : Distance s-ivil h,iv.-rti V ! I xirwt'in nn(t Bef,slm 4 New York nl s.iti Kiom e mj. i Sfv Y'lirk anil ll"li' : , i-w Orlnan! anil Mi.nkia.ir . w ' Nw tlriitau6 M'ul u t i ;iin i .1 -i , 11 u ' i .Neiv York anil Sim I l ani-ia Mint New Yurk and iikni..Hiu ', ""-i New York and M.1U, a m- a l.ierpiHil ami Sin Kr:ni 7 a 1 i laerii0'! and U"'yl"nt; l.l' i l.iveioel and Y'ekaliiiitiH l.n ,i Livit-ol anil ll.i.iii , :'pi Tin' tliwtani e limn n .Iratiu (a New Y ork is . " " 1 ' ' S.m Franriixi t tlnii'ihilu i. . a. , t '"a llanila is a.'i-'-' TIU'MAN I.. KLTdX. KOl l.llUII. The London a? the Unmans lies hurt" f about 18 ftet lii hnv (lie l" el of Cheap aide, and si ill il"t per than that ii bur iedtthe earlier london of the liiiriais. In nearly all parts oi the it y the. .. have been diseocre-l lessc'.hi t "il pae nents, Roman baths. pnribN. Iji iti i Vases, pandals. ke s. vcai.on. ciri and Statues of the undent llnnian uinis. 1 I ' 1! " ' r