The Project Gutenberg EBook of Waterways and Water Transport in Different Countries, by J. Stephen Jeans This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. Title: Waterways and Water Transport in Different Countries With a description of the Panama, Suez, Manchester, Nicaraguan, and other canals. Author: J. Stephen Jeans Release Date: February 13, 2018 [EBook #56560] Language: English Character set encoding: UTF-8 *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WATERWAYS AND WATER TRANSPORT *** Produced by Chris Curnow, Paul Marshall and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive) E & F N Spon London & New York “INK-PHOTO.” SPRAGUE & CO. LONDON. NEWTON CUTTING ON THE BIRMINGHAM CANAL (TAME VALLEY). WATERWAYS AND WATER TRANSPORT IN DIFFERENT COUNTRIES: WITH A DESCRIPTION OF THE PANAMA, SUEZ, MANCHESTER, NICARAGUAN, AND OTHER CANALS. BY J. STEPHEN JEANS, M.R.I., F.S.S., AUTHOR OF ‘ENGLAND’S SUPREMACY’; ‘RAILWAY PROBLEMS,’ ETC. E. & F. N. SPON, 125, STRAND, LONDON. NEW YORK: 12, CORTLANDT STREET. 1890. [iii] INTRODUCTION AND OUTLINE. It would probably be difficult to name any subject that is of more importance to the material interests of a country than adequate means of transport. Without such means, nations possessed of the most abundant natural resources in many other respects would be likely to decay. With ample facilities of transport, however, the most limited natural resources may be made to go a long way, and nations that are not possessed of great natural endowments may even rise to a high place in the economy of human industry. Transportation facilities naturally divide themselves into the two categories of facilities by land and facilities by water. The former category embraces highways and railroads; the latter includes the navigation of seas, lakes, rivers, and canals. It is the purpose of this volume to deal with water transport only, and more particularly that part of water transport which is carried on by means of artificial waterways. Railway transport, therefore, will only be incidentally referred to. Nor do we propose to expatiate to any extent upon the navigation of seas and lakes, which is a matter quite apart from canal and river navigation, and is usually carried on under very different conditions. Canals are usually ranged under one or other of three great categories, namely:— 1. For purposes of navigation. 2. For irrigation, and 3. For domestic water supply. Under the first heading there are many different descriptions of waterways, the more important being— a. Canals intended for the purpose of connecting oceans or seas, such as those of Suez, Panama, the North Sea, and Nicaragua. b. Canals for the purpose of bringing the sea to an inland town, such as those of Manchester and St. Petersburg. c. Canals designed to connect and complete communication between different rivers or lakes, like the Grand Canal of China, the Erie Canal, and the Welland Canal. d. Canals constructed for the purpose of enabling the obstructions caused by falls or cataracts on natural waterways to be overcome by artificial means. As water transport by the most efficient and most economical means practicable is the raison d’être of the present work, we shall speak for the most part of navigation canals only. The chapters that follow will show, that canal navigation has not only an interesting, but a very ancient history. It is, indeed, so long since canals were first projected and constructed that it is extremely difficult to trace their beginnings. The Bœotian Canal, which is said to have drained the Lake Mœris by several channels carried in tunnels through high mountainous barriers, is of such fabulous age as to have led fiction to usurp the place of history, and even of tradition, when describing the work at a period of time so far back as prior to the conquest of Greece by Rome. The celebrated canals of China have been assigned an unknown antiquity, but trustworthy representations have led authorities to conclude that they are scarcely older than the works in the Deccan. At all events, they date from less than 900 years ago, a century subsequent to the first irrigation of Valentia. In Spain, the Moors constructed canals to connect inland places with rivers, particularly the Guadalquiver, and connecting Granada with Cadiz. They also introduced, when they conquered that country, their own system of irrigation, with the customs and laws relating thereto, which are followed at the present hour without material change. Cresy has pointed out that Pliny’s correspondence with the Emperor Trajan proves the importance attached to the subject of waterways. “The consul in a letter points out such designs as were worthy the glorious and immortal name of Trajan, ‘they being no less useful than magnificent.’ He describes an extensive lake near the city of Nicomedia, upon which the commodities of the country were easily and cheaply transported to the high road, and thence were conveyed on carriages to the sea coast at great charge and labour. To remedy this inconvenience, he recommends that a canal should be, if possible, cut from the lake to the sea, observing that one had already been attempted by one of the kings of the country, but whether for the purpose of draining the adjacent lands, or making a communication between the lake and the river, was uncertain. These useful works, in common with all others, fell into decay with the decline of the Roman empire. During the disastrous period which succeeded, until the time of Charlemagne, Europe is deficient in any examples of similar undertakings: this sovereign commenced the projects of uniting the Rhine to the Danube, and of opening a new communication between the German Ocean and the Black Sea.” The Romans were great canal-makers. They were, indeed, as their extant works in Italy, Spain, and other countries show to this day, very capable hydraulic engineers. But in Roman times, canals were constructed for irrigation and water-supply purposes, rather than for purposes of navigation. It was not until some centuries after the decline of the Roman power that navigation canals began to attract attention. Previous to the time when locks, sluices, and other works of engineering art became general, canals could only be carried through comparatively level territories. Hence we not unnaturally find that some of the earliest canals for navigable purposes were constructed in Holland, where the configuration of the ground is specially adapted to their construction. [iv] [v] Mr. Vignoles, in his address to the Institution of Civil Engineers in 1870, remarked that, when the success of canals in the Low Countries attracted the attention of Europe, a sort of mania arose in France for inland navigation. Most of these were rendered abortive, and became abandoned, “from uncertainty in the supply of water on account of irregular rainfall, and from the pre-existing monopolies of the millers, who appear at all times and places to have been, as they still are, the natural enemies and thorns in the sides of the hydraulic engineer.” Navigation on the upper branches of rivers rapidly ceased, but concessions for canals in France were then given, the Canal de Briare being the earliest, and next the Languedoc Canal, though neither was finished until about forty years after their first imperfect commencement. So early as the twelfth century, large canals had been cut in Flanders, though the great canal from Brussels to the Scheldt was not completed until 1560. This, however, was about a century before Louis XIV. had finished the earliest canal in France. Probably the first canal constructed in England was the Exeter Canal, a comparatively short waterway, completed in 1572. But the regulation and canalisation of rivers had been attempted long before that time. The improvement of the navigation of the Thames was undertaken in 1423; of the Lea, in 1425; of the Ouse (Yorkshire), in 1462; of the Severn in 1503; of the Stour (Essex), 1504; of the Humber, in 1531; and of the Welland, in 1571. During the seventeenth century, again, many similar works were undertaken. The Colne, the Itchin, the Wye, the Avon, the Medway, the Wey, the Bure, the Foss Dyke, the Witham, the Fal and Vale, the Aire and Calder, and the Trent were all more or less canalised during the period between 1623 and 1699. In the next century, projects for river improvement and canal navigation proceeded apace. In 1700, the rivers Avon and Frome were regulated. In the following twenty years improvements were carried out on the Dee, the Lark, the Derwent, the Frant, the Stour, the Nene, the Kennett, the Wear, the Weaver, the Mersey and the Irwell. The Leeds and Liverpool Canal was commenced in 1720, the Stroudwater Canal in 1730, and the Bridgwater Canal in 1737. From this date, until 1794, canal navigation was extended rapidly, while Acts of Parliament were obtained for the improvement of the Ley, the Avon, the Cart, the Blyth, the Hebble, the Stort, and the Clyde. Between 1763 and 1800 upwards of eighty different canal projects were put forward, and most of them were completed. The Trent and Mersey, the Staffordshire and Worcestershire, the Droitwich, the Coventry, the Birmingham, the Forth and Clyde, the Oxford, the Monkland, the Leeds and Liverpool, the Chesterfield, the Bradford, the Ellesmere, the Market Weighton, the Bude, Sir John Ramsden’s, the Gresley, the Dudley, the Stourbridge, the Basingstoke, the Bedford, the Thames and Severn, the Shropshire Union, the Andover, and the Cromford Canals were all undertaken between 1767 and 1790. The following ten years, however, may be regarded as the heyday of canal-making in England. In 1791 the Hereford and Gloucester, the Leicester, the Manchester, Bolton and Bury, the Leominster, the Melton Mowbray, the Neath, and the Worcester and Birmingham Canals were commenced. Eighteen more canals were undertaken in 1793, and twelve others in 1794. The same year that witnessed the opening of the Stockton and Darlington Railway, saw also the construction of the English and Bristol Channels Canal, otherwise the Liskeard and Looe; but the number of canals constructed since 1825 has been very limited. Eight different canals were opened between 1826 and 1830, including the Macclesfield, the Birmingham and Liverpool, the Avon and Gloucestershire, and the Nene and Wisbech; but since 1830 the only canals for which Parliamentary sanction was obtained, until the Act was passed for the Manchester Ship Canal in 1886, were the Ellesmere and Chester Canal, and the Droitwich Junction Canal. Since 1830 the canals of Great Britain have been under a great ban. The superior speed and the greater punctuality provided by railway transport have caused them to be neglected, and, with only a few exceptions, more or less disused. The railway system has been extended so rapidly, and has secured the carrying trade of the country so completely, that canals have until lately been regarded as practically obsolete and useless. Many miles of canal navigation have passed into the hands of the railway companies, while a considerable mileage has become derelict. Although the railways have secured possession of some 1700 miles of canals in Great Britain, they do not appear to have profited much thereby. The Great Western Railway Company owns no less than seven canals, on which they have expended a million sterling. In 1887 one of these canals earned 2700l. profit, while the other six lost 1300l., besides the whole of the interest upon their capital cost. The experience of the other railway companies has been more or less similar to that of the Great Western. The railways have been nursed and developed; the canals have been neglected and allowed to perish. The railway companies have been accused of acquiring canal property in order that they might destroy it, and thereby get rid of a dangerous rival. This is probably not the case. The railway companies are fully aware of the fact that water transport under suitable conditions is more economical than railway transport. It would therefore have suited them, at the same rates, to carry by water heavy traffic, in the delivery of which time was not of much importance. But the canals, as they came into their possession, were really not adapted for such traffic without being more or less remodelled, and this the railway companies have not attempted. When we consider the enormous disadvantages under which the majority of the canals of this country now labour, the great matter for wonder is, not that they do not secure the lion’s share of the traffic, but that they get any traffic at all. A railway is usually carried from point to point by the most direct route possible, and the cases in which there is any considerable diversion from the most direct route are comparatively rare. But in laying out the canals the designers and promoters appear to have endeavoured to take the longest instead of the shortest route available. Thus, for example, the distance between Liverpool and Wigan is thirty-four miles by canal while it is only nineteen miles by railway. Again, the railway route from Liverpool to Leeds is eighty miles, whereas by canal the distance is not less than 128 miles. If the canal rates were very much lower than the railway rates, these differences would still be very much against them. But [vi] [vii] [viii] there is not really much difference between them at present, the Leeds and Liverpool Canal, which is a fairly representative one, charging a halfpenny to twopence per ton per mile, according to the nature of the traffic. Then again, the speed on British canals can seldom be carried above 2½ miles per hour, not to speak of the delay in getting through the locks, of which there are ninety-three between Leeds and Liverpool. It would be the idlest of idle dreams to expect that the canal system of this or any other country, as originally constructed, can be resuscitated, or even temporarily galvanised into activity, in competition with railways. Canals as they were built a century ago have no longer any function to fulfil that is worthy of serious consideration. Their mission is ended; their use is an anachronism. They do not provide the means of cheaper transport, and they have no other advantage to offer to the trader that would be a sufficient equivalent for the tedium of their transport. The canals of the future must be adapted to the new conditions of commerce. What we now require is that our great centres of population and industry shall be made seaports—that Birmingham, Leeds, Sheffield, and other places, shall not suffer hurt because they are inland towns. The existing canals may serve as a valuable nucleus for the new departure. Their importance as a means to this end has already been practically recognised. The Manchester Ship Canal Company has acquired the Bridgwater Navigation. For the purposes of the projected Sheffield and Goole Ship Canal it is proposed to acquire several of the old navigations, including the Dearne and Dove Canal, the Stainforth and Keadby Canal, and other waterways. Other improved canals have been suggested, and Mr. Samuel Lloyd has advocated the construction of a great national canal which would connect all the principal industrial centres of the kingdom with each other and with the sea. There appears to be no insuperable difficulty in the way of realising such a project. Capital alone is wanted. Whether that essential will be forthcoming is, however, very doubtful. Much is likely to depend on the extent to which the Manchester Ship Canal is successful. It would be a mistake to go too quickly. If ship canal transport is likely to be a means of salvation to British trade and commerce, we shall not be much the worse if we wait for it a little longer. It is not well to do anything that would tend to destroy or discount the value of the vast railway property of this country. The traders have long been trying to “agree with their adversary,” in so far as they have differences with the railway companies; and if the latter are duly reasonable, the future may still be theirs. It has been objected that a canal could not provide large manufacturers, mine owners, or others who now enjoy the advantages of sidings, giving direct connection with the railway system upon which their works or mines are situated, with the same facilities as they are now possessed of. This, however, is a mistake. The fact is that a wharf may be provided almost as easily and as cheaply as a railway siding. On some canals, as for example on the Birmingham system, the different works along the route of the canal have been supplied in almost every case with wharves, until they are now counted by hundreds. Broadly stated, the problem that now presses for solution amounts to this—In what way can we best take advantage of the well-ascertained fact that under ordinary conditions a ton of goods can be transported about 2000 miles by water for the same cost that it can be sent 100 miles on land? It is no unusual thing to find that a ton of goods can be transported 40 miles by steamer for one penny, making allowance for every charge.[1] It is not, of course, pretended that goods can be carried by inland navigation for anything like this rate. But it has been well established that even on canals, with all the disadvantages of slow speed, limited depth, small boats, frequent locks, and other drawbacks, the transport of heavy traffic can be effected for less than one-sixth of a penny per ton per mile, which is not one-half of the lowest rates at which the railways of Great Britain carry mineral traffic at the present time. It is necessary to add that canal companies do not, in Great Britain at least, carry for anything like the low rate stated, except perhaps on the Weaver Navigation, which is quite exceptional. An important question that naturally occurs to any one who has studied the history of canal navigation in foreign countries is that of how far it is the duty of the State to take such waterways under its control. This is really a political problem, which scarcely belongs to that part of the subject which we have undertaken to consider. It may, however, be observed that in the United States, in France, and in one or two other countries, canals have been acquired by the State, and made as free of tolls as the rivers. This, of course, affords to canal transport in those countries a striking advantage over the system in Great Britain. It has been calculated by a high authority[2] that an expenditure of 12,000l. per mile would be required to put the inland navigations of England into good order, and to adapt them generally for larger traffic, with steam-tugs and barges or boats of sufficient size. This would mean for the 3000 miles of canal already constructed an expenditure of 24,000,000l. It is calculated that about 20,000,000l. have already been expended upon our waterways,[3] so that the total outlay, after the expenditure suggested by Sir John Hawkshaw, would be about 44,000,000l. If the State were to borrow this sum, it could procure it, no doubt, at 3 per cent., which would mean that the total annual burden entailed upon the country by the freeing of the canals would be 920,000l., or only a 1⁄125 part of our total national expenditure. This is certainly a small price to pay for so desirable an object. But upon the proposal as just stated there are two important remarks to be made—the first, that the suggested expenditure of 12,000l. per mile would only give us canals adapted for the navigation of large barges or vessels of not more than 150 to 200 tons, whereas what is chiefly required is internal water communication that would enable an ordinary merchant steamer to sail right up to Birmingham, Leeds, Bradford, and other large towns; the second, that no such maritime ship canal has hitherto been constructed for less than 120,000l. per mile, including all contingencies.[4] The raising of this sum is a very different item from the raising of 12,000l. per mile. The most serious objection, however, would be the outcry on the part of the railway interest that the Government was entering into competition with private enterprise. This, of course, would be no new thing. The New York State canals compete with the railways, which are private property, and so do the canals of France. The duty of the State stops at providing the waterway. It does not, of course, undertake transportation. That business is left, like the same business on the railways, to private enterprise. The canals might, [ix] [x] [xi] therefore, if acquired by the State, be regarded as so many additional miles of navigable rivers possessed by the country, or so many more miles of seaboard provided for the benefit of towns that have hitherto been shut out from direct maritime advantages. Canals are, indeed, entitled to be regarded in the same light as a common turnpike road. The State would hardly be likely to permit private ownership in turnpikes. The community at large are taxed for their maintenance, and there has never been any serious contention that it should be otherwise. The time has come when it behoves us to consider whether canals should not be similarly controlled and administered, since they are, without doubt, as necessary for the transport of goods as turnpike roads are for the passage of vehicles and pedestrians. As to the reasons that have led the author to undertake the publication of the present volume, a remark or two may be permitted. In 1875 he undertook the preparation of a work[5] on the growth of the railway system up to that time for the Directors of the North-Eastern Railway, on the occasion of their celebration at Darlington of the Jubilee of the Stockton and Darlington line—the first passenger railway constructed in this country on which locomotives were employed. In inquiring into the history of that railway, he was struck with the importance that was attached half a century before to the possession of canal navigation, and with the great facilities that it afforded to the districts through which it was carried. Since then he has from time to time had occasion to look into the same subject, and especially so in 1882, when he was required to give evidence before the Select Committee on Railway Rates and Fares,[6] as to the differences that exist on English and Continental railways in the charges made for the transport of heavy traffic. He found also that, notwithstanding the lower rates of transport on Continental railways, very great importance was attached to the maintenance, in a high state of efficiency, of the waterways of all other countries in Europe except our own, and that in most other countries the State specially charged itself with the duty of seeing that this was effectually done. It was but a short step from the acquisition of this knowledge to the natural endeavour to ascertain why English canals were not deemed equally important to the trade and commerce of the greatest of commercial nations. The results of that inquiry are set forth in the following pages; but the author has not been content to examine the economic side of the case alone. Finding not only that the canals of the world had a most interesting history, which has never hitherto been set forth in the form of a continuous narrative, but that one of the most remarkable movements of the present time was a demand for artificial waterways, in order to reduce both the time and the distance now required for the intercourse of different important centres of our planet, and give inland towns a more direct connection with the sea, he has devoted much research to the investigation of the origin and growth of these enterprises, and has set down the results in as interesting and useful a form as he could. A good deal of attention has been given in this work to the subject of isthmian canals. It has been suggested that a “ship and barge” railway would be an improvement upon both railways and canals in the joint advantages of economy and speed of transport This is an “American notion,” which has not yet, so far as we are aware, been put in practice, although it was put forward by the late Captain Eads, in the form of a project for a ship railway across the isthmus of Techuantepec, as the true solution of isthmian transit. It has been claimed that such a railway “can be operated and maintained at less cost than the canal, employ a rate of speed five times as great as is possible in the canal, can be operated for the whole twelve months of the year instead of six—or during the lake navigation, like the ship canal—will require no breaking bulk, and through freight can be hauled over it at 2½ cents per bushel of wheat,” i.e. for a distance of about 340 miles.[7] On the other hand, however, no one appears to have seriously prosecuted this enterprise since the decease of its gifted author, while two ship canals have been promoted across the American isthmus. In the appendix will be found a large mass of information as to the extent of the British canal system, and the dates at which the principal canal and river navigations were executed. Some data as to the extent and character of the principal river systems have also been introduced in tabular form. It is not pretended that this latter information is by any means complete. The merest epitome of the rivers and river systems of all the countries of the world would itself fill a volume; but it is hoped that the most essential data have been supplied with sufficient fullness and accuracy. In the best interests of British commerce and industry, we cannot do better than attempt to follow the excellent counsel given by Ald. Bailey, of Manchester, when he urged[8] that we should “make England to the world what London is to England: make every part of the verge, fringe, shore, creek, bay, river, and inlet of our map as equal as possible in relation to distance from the shores of foreign countries; increase the value of the silver streak, double the coast line, resuscitate the ancient ports, extend some more inland, make Britain narrower, shorten the distance from coast to coast, from sea to sea, and increase the setting of Shakespeare’s ‘Fortress built by nature for herself, This little world— This precious stone set in a silver sea.’” FOOTNOTES INTRODUCTION: Mr. Bailey, in his interesting address to the Manchester Association of Foremen Engineers, in 1886, stated that he had found this to be the cost of transport with a vessel of 2360 tons, including interest, depreciation, and insurance. Sir John Hawkshaw, in his evidence before the Select Committee on Canals, 1883. The total expenditure has been variously stated. Smiles, in his ‘Lives of the Engineers,’ puts it at one figure, while it was stated before the Select Committee on Canals at another. [xii] [xiii] [xiv] [xv] [1] [2] [3] The actual cost of construction of the Suez Canal was about this amount, but the additional expenses incurred, and in the majority of cases necessary to such an enterprise, brought the cost up to 200,000_l._, which was also the average cost of the Amsterdam Ship Canal. The Manchester Ship Canal is estimated to cost some 250,000_l._ a mile. ‘Jubilee Memorial of the Railway System,’ Longmans. Report of Select Committee. ‘Transactions of the American Institute of Civil Engineers,’ vol. xiv. p. 48. Address to the Manchester Association of Engineers. CONTENTS. page Introduction and Outline iii SECTION I. THE WATERWAYS OF DIFFERENT COUNTRIES. CHAPTER I. The Transportation Problem 1 CHAPTER II. English Rivers 23 CHAPTER III. The English Canal System 40 CHAPTER IV. The Waterways of Scotland 63 CHAPTER V. The Waterways of Ireland 74 CHAPTER VI. Projected Canals in the United Kingdom 82 CHAPTER VII. The Waterways of France 93 CHAPTER VIII. The Waterways of Germany 116 CHAPTER IX. The Waterways of Belgium 134 CHAPTER X. The Waterways of Holland 145 CHAPTER XI. The Waterways of Italy 153 CHAPTER XII. The Waterways of Sweden 164 CHAPTER XIII. The Waterways of Russia 172 CHAPTER XIV. The Waterways of Austria-Hungary 185 [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [xvi] [xvii] CHAPTER XV. The Waterways of the United States 191 CHAPTER XVI. The Waterways of Canada 216 CHAPTER XVII. The Waterways of South and Central America 229 CHAPTER XVIII. Chinese Waterways 232 CHAPTER XIX. The Waterways of British India 237 SECTION II. SHIP CANALS. CHAPTER XX. The Suez Canal 245 CHAPTER XXI. The Panama Canal 274 CHAPTER XXII. The Nicaraguan Canal 314 CHAPTER XXIII. The Manchester Ship Canal 329 CHAPTER XXIV. The Isthmus of Corinth Canal 346 CHAPTER XXV. The River Thames 353 SECTION III. TRANSPORT AND WORKING. CHAPTER XXVI. Railways and Canals 364 CHAPTER XXVII. Comparative Cost of Water and Land Transport 375 CHAPTER XXVIII. Systems of Transport and Haulage 391 CHAPTER XXIX. Locks, Planes, Sluice-Gates, and Lifts 408 CHAPTER XXX. Tunnels, Viaducts, Embankments and Weirs 424 CHAPTER XXXI. Speed of Transport 435 CHAPTER XXXII. [xviii] [xix] Canal Traffic: its Character and its Density 441 CHAPTER XXXIII. The Making of Artificial Waterways 447 CHAPTER XXXIV. Canal Boats 460 CHAPTER XXXV. The State Acquisition and Control of Waterways 469 APPENDICES. I.—Chronology of River Improvement and Canal Navigation in England up to 1852 475 II.—Canals and Inland River Navigation in England, Wales, and Scotland, distinguishing Mileage under, and Mileage not under, the Control of Railway Companies 478 III.—Through Routes of Canal and Inland Navigation in England and Wales 485 IV.—Statement of the Canals, &c., in the United Kingdom, Owned or Controlled by Railway Companies on 31st December, 1882, arranged under the Dates of the Special Acts Authorising the Arrangements 490 V.—The Principal River Systems of Europe and America 490 INDEX 495 WATERWAYS AND WATER TRANSPORT. [xx] [1] SECTION I. THE WATERWAYS OF DIFFERENT COUNTRIES. CHAPTER I. THE TRANSPORTATION PROBLEM. “Of all inventions, the alphabet and the printing press alone excepted, those inventions which abridge distance have done most for civilisation.” —Macaulay. The history of transportation is largely, and of necessity, the history of material progress. It is hardly possible to conceive of the prosperity of a people to whom the most precious possessions that the arts and sciences have bestowed upon mankind for the purposes of commerce were unknown. Such a people could, no doubt, exist, and perhaps maintain a considerable amount of rude health. But, like the aborigines of an unsettled and uncultivated territory, they would find themselves shut out from participation in the advantages which civilisation confers upon mankind. They would be exclusive, uncultivated, ignorant, incapable of great effort, limited in their capacity for enjoyment, subject to the constant danger of famine, and without the command of those amenities which have created such a gulf between the “rude forefathers of the hamlet” and the happy possessors of all that civilisation can bestow. Only a very perfunctory acquaintance with the physical configuration of our planet is required, in order to show that the natural arrangement of land and water is not the most convenient that could be devised for the purposes of commerce and travel. The oceans and seas do not afford in all cases the most direct and desirable routes between one part of the world and another. Rivers of otherwise gigantic dimensions are now and again found to be possessed of rocky and shallow beds that are unsuited to navigation except by the tiniest craft. Promontories are projected into “the waste of waters,” compelling the navigator to sail for hundreds or thousands of miles further than “the crow flies” in order to reach his destination. Every here and there an isthmus is found to divide waters that appear as if they were intended by Nature to be joined together. The same remarkable absence of facilities for promoting the requirements of commerce is apparent on land as on water. The surface of the earth, and the divisions of land and water, appear to have been left by Nature in such a condition as to tax the highest powers and capacities of man. The knowledge of roads, of bridges, of canals, has been laboriously acquired and slowly applied. The aboriginal inhabitants of a country usually care for none of these things. Beasts of burden are seldom used in the most primitive conditions of existence, and, without these, roads are not so much of a necessity. Man, however, found out, in course of time, that it suited his interests and his convenience to establish a system of interchange of commodities. The simple and self-contained habits of the trapper and the hunter gave place to a more composite order of being. Then it was that the primeval forest, the jungle, the morass, and the prairie became rectangulated with roadways over which traffic could be rudely transported on the backs of mules, horses, or other beasts of burden. As exchange and barter extended, the pack-horse was found inefficient. He could only perform a very limited day’s work, whether measured by quantity or by distance. For transport over great distances he was virtually useless. In the absence of any other system of transport, districts near the sea, or placed on navigable rivers with easy access to the ocean, became developed at the expense of other districts that had equal, and perhaps greater, facilities otherwise except those of transport. A notable case in point is that of the coal trade. For many years the export coal trade of this country was limited to an area within 12 miles of convenient ports, because coal could not be transported beyond that distance except at a virtually prohibitory cost. A hundred and thirty years ago, England was in a very different position to that which she occupies to-day. So, also, was the rest of the world. The woollen trade was the greatest of our national industries. The cotton industry was just beginning to take a firm root The quantity of coal produced in Great Britain was estimated at five or six millions of tons per annum. The quantity of iron produced was believed to be about 100,000 tons. The only coalfield that had been developed to any extent was that of Durham and Northumberland. The working of coal far from the seaboard was impossible on a large scale, because there were no means of transportation that would allow of anything being carried more than a few miles, unless it were of the highest value. The cotton, woollen, silk, and other textiles were made by hand-looms, and for the most part in the private dwellings of the workers. The modern factory system had not come into being. The condition of the roads, even so late as the middle of the eighteenth century, was in a very large number of cases a matter for just and serious complaint. Lord Hervey wrote from Kensington in 1736 that the road between that village (at that time) and London had become so bad that “we live here in the same solitude as we would do if cast on a rock in the middle of the ocean, and all the Londoners tell us that there is between them and us an impassable gulf of mud.” In London itself the pedestrians who made use of the public thoroughfares had to walk on the ordinary round paving- stones which are still employed in some towns for the centre of the road, pavements being unknown. The streets were lit with oil-lamps sufficiently to make darkness visible, gas not having been introduced. The common highway was also the common sewer. The ruts in the thoroughfares, even in the streets of London, made it dangerous to employ vehicles, which, indeed, except in the form of sedan-chairs, had not yet come to be largely employed. But these dangers and troubles, manifest and inconvenient though they were, by no means exhausted the list. In the absence of a proper system of police, and with streets enveloped in darkness, there was serious danger incurred in stirring abroad after nightfall. The public thoroughfares were infested by bands of footpads and robbers. The main streets of London were the worst off, and so serious was the danger of going out at night that it was the rarest thing to find any one stirring after dark. So far was this system carried that robberies took place in broad daylight. Even such public places as Piccadilly and Oxford Street were not exempted from the common danger. Horace Walpole relates [2] [3] that he was robbed in this way, with Lord Eglinton, Lady Albemarle, and others. Those who had to travel to the adjacent villages of Paddington and Kensington were afraid to proceed alone. It was therefore customary to wait until a sufficiently numerous band had been collected to enable the pedestrians to resist any possible attack of footpads. The Vauxhall and Ranelagh Gardens, then the chief places of amusement in the vicinage of the metropolis, had to employ patrols to keep the way clear to London. As in the metropolis, so in the provinces. The roads, both in the towns and outside them, were in many cases as bad as bad could be. Their not unusual condition was that of “a narrow hollow way, little wider than a ditch, barely allowing of the passage of a vehicle drawn by horses in a single line.” This deep, narrow road was flanked by an elevated causeway, covered with flags or boulder stones, along which the traffic of the locality was carried on the backs of single horses, so that “it is difficult to imagine the delay, the toil, and the perils by which the conduct of the traffic was attended.” Under these circumstances, “there were towns, even in the same county, more widely separated for all practical purposes than London and Glasgow in the present day.”[9] Business was done slowly, and involved so great an expenditure of time and trouble that prices were necessarily high. News travelled more slowly still, and it was sometimes months before the people who lived at the extremities of the island knew what had happened in the metropolis. The reader who desires to obtain a graphic and eloquent account of the circumstances of England previous to the canal era could not do better than consult Macaulay, who, in the famous third chapter of his ‘History,’ has devoted a considerable amount of space to the consideration of the social and economic changes that had come over the country since 1685. The description given of the condition of the people in that year might almost be literally applied to their condition in the middle of the eighteenth century. The population had increased, it is true, and commerce had been developed in the interval. But the facilities for rapid and economical transportation had not been materially altered for the better. The great mass of the people were as ignorant, as superstitious, as shiftless as in the seventeenth century. Their sanitary surroundings were as unwholesome, their industrial pursuits as improvident, their habits as deplorable, their hardships as irksome, their discomforts and inconveniences as tiresome. From this remarkable record of the days of our forefathers we quote the following passages as being specially germane to the subject under consideration:— “It was by the highways that both travellers and goods generally passed from place to place; and those highways appear to have been far worse than might have been expected from the degree of wealth and civilisation which the nation had even then attained. On the best lines of communication the ruts were deep, the descents precipitous, and the way often such as it was hardly possible to distinguish, in the dusk, from the unenclosed heath and fen which lay on both sides. Ralph Thoresby, the antiquary, was in danger of losing his way on the great North Road between Barnsley Moor and Tuxford, and actually lost his way between Doncaster and York. Pepys and his wife, travelling in their own coach, lost their way between Newbury and Reading. In the course of the same tour they lost their way near Salisbury, and were in danger of having to pass the night on the Plain. It was only in fine weather that the whole breadth of the road was available for wheeled vehicles. Often the mud lay deep on the right and the left, and only a narrow track of firm ground rose above the quagmire. At such times obstructions and quarrels were frequent, and the path was sometimes blocked up during a long time by carriers, neither of whom would break the way. It happened, almost every day, that coaches stuck fast, until a team of cattle could be procured from some neighbouring farm to tug them out of the slough. But in bad seasons the traveller had to encounter inconveniences still more serious. Thoresby, who was in the habit of travelling between Leeds and the capital, has recorded in his Diary such a series of perils and disasters as might suffice for a journey to the Frozen Ocean or to the Desert of Sahara.[10] “The markets were often inaccessible during several months. It is said that the fruits of the earth were allowed to rot in one place, while in another place, distant only a few miles, the supply fell far short of the demand. The wheeled carriages were in this district generally pulled by oxen. When Prince George of Denmark visited the stately mansion of Petworth, in wet weather, he was six hours in going nine miles, and it was necessary that a body of sturdy hinds should be on each side of his coach in order to prop it. Of the carriages which contained his retinue several were upset and injured. A letter from one of the party has been preserved, in which the unfortunate courtier complains that, during fourteen hours, he never once alighted, except when his coach was overturned and stuck fast in the mud.” A story is told of an old stage-coach driver who, finding that his occupation had been seriously interfered with by the modern innovation of railways, thought he would strike a blow for the old system by attacking the railway in a vulnerable part. “Consider,” he argued, “what happens in case of a collision. If two stage coaches come into collision, and there is an upset, why, there you are. But in a railway collision, where are you?” In those days stage coaches did not enjoy the immunity from disaster that they do in these, when macadamised roads enable them to roll along almost as if they were on a billiard table.[11] When the canal system was being fairly started in England, only one stage coach ran between London and Edinburgh, starting once a month from each city, and taking ten days for the journey in summer, and twelve days in winter. It took fourteen days to travel between London and Glasgow. In 1760 it took three days to travel from Sheffield to London, and in 1774 Burke travelled from London to Bath with what was described as “incredible speed” in twenty-four hours. [4] [5] [6] [7] Much of the discomfort, the high range of prices, the general existence of poverty, the limited extent of commercial operations, in the early part of the eighteenth century was no doubt due to the imperfect development of the modern processes of manufacture and distribution—to the production of textiles by the old hand-loom, of iron by the old- fashioned type of blast-furnace, of steel by the costly cementation process, of clothing without the aid of the sewing- machine, and of agricultural crops without any of the mechanical aids to husbandry that are now so general and so conducive to economical working. But the high cost of transport had also much to answer for. Before the period of Macadam, it cost 2s. 6d. per mile to transport coal by the old pack-horse on an ordinary road. At this rate, it would have cost from 10l. to 15l. to transport a ton of coals from the Midland coalfield to London, a service which is now performed for 6s. to 7s. per ton. With only the old pack-horse facilities it would have cost an almost incredible sum to have performed the same service which the railways now render to the people of the United Kingdom in the transport of minerals and merchandise. While the knowledge of the arts, and especially of the arts that relate to transportation, were in so backward a state, it was inevitable that the prices of commodities should be high, and their interchange limited. Having to pay so much for the articles that they did not grow or produce themselves, the people of England, in the middle of the eighteenth century, were extremely poor, as a rule, and had very little chance to increase their wealth. The wages of the working classes were very low. A shilling a day was deemed to be excellent earnings. In Scotland the wages of a day labourer were only 5d. per day in summer and 6d. in winter. The price of bread was ordinarily much higher than it is at the present time.[12] The prices of clothing and of the usual requisites for domestic comfort and convenience were very much more than at the present day. The rates of wages were hardly enough to enable the great mass of the people to keep body and soul together. Butchers’ meat was all but unknown, even among those who were tolerably well off.[13] Plain homespun was almost the only description of clothing that was worn. Shops were hardly known in the smaller towns or villages, and the country people were mainly supplied with such requirements as they were able to indulge in, outside of their own productions, by hawkers, who carried packs everywhere, as they sometimes do in remote country places in our own day. In localities where coal was not produced, it was not to be purchased for love or money, unless at seaport towns, and the fuel ordinarily used was either turf or wood. From this condition of things England was largely rescued in the latter part of the eighteenth century by the introduction and development of internal waterways. This movement gave a remarkable stimulus to commercial and industrial progress. It enabled raw materials to be transported at about one-tenth of what they had formerly cost, and facilitated the interchange of commodities between the different parts of the kingdom to an extent previously undreamt of. It is remarkable what a large crop of important discoveries and inventions were made about the time that canals began to be generally used as waterways. Robinson’s project for working steam locomotives on common roads was put forward the year after Brindley commenced the Bridgwater Canal. In the same year the manufacture of thread and gauze was commenced at Paisley, and Jedediah Strutt made his first improvement on the stocking loom. Two years later Arkwright obtained his first patent for the spinning-frame, and Watt made his first experiments on the power of steam with Papin’s digester. It was in 1762 that the production of Wedgwood ware was first begun, and the same year witnessed a notable development of the linen manufacture of Ireland, while in 1763 Hargreaves the weaver produced his spinning-jenny in his house adjoining the print works of the first Sir Robert Peel. These are but a few of the concurrent and collateral movements of the period. Of the measure in which they were aided by internal transport we shall have more to say by and by. An examination of the geography of European countries will disclose the fact that the United Kingdom is almost unique in regard to its possession of a magnificent coast-line, studded with harbours and docks, and approached by a large number of navigable rivers, which afford easy communication with the sea. If we compare our facilities with those of Germany, Austria, Belgium, Holland, Italy, or indeed any other European country, we cannot fail to be struck with their enormous superiority. Scarcely any part of the United Kingdom is more than a hundred miles distant from a good harbour. In many European countries there are important towns that are very much further, while some countries, like Switzerland, have no seaboard at all, and others, like Austria, besides having very few ports worthy of the name, are landlocked on more sides than one. Again, let us look at the recent history of European politics. Do we not find that a more extensive seaboard is the ruling passion of such nations as Germany and Russia, whose outlets are few and inconvenient? The half-suspected designs of Germany upon Holland, and of Russia upon Turkish and Chinese territory, have been mainly ascribed to this ambition. To obtain such an outlet for the Asiatic part of her dominions, Russia is at the present moment laying down a railway across Siberia, which will give her a closer connection with China than the Chinese seem to care for, and is likely, in the opinion of some shrewd politicians, to eventuate in her obtaining possession of a large slice of the Celestial Empire. The neutralisation of certain prominent waterways is, moreover, regarded as a matter of so much importance, that costly and protracted wars have been undertaken with a view to that end, nor would it be difficult to trace a connection between the passion for more ports and the costly armaments which have now for many years threatened the peace and impoverished the resources of Europe. Nevertheless, with a command of the sea that makes us at once the envy and the despair of rival nations, and has placed our shipping supremacy on...