Canal du Midi

“ It has a fall of 420 ft. and over fifty locks, and is navigable for vessels having the maximum dimensions of 981⁄2 ft. length, 19 ft. breadth and 61⁄2 ft. draught. The carrying trade upon it is chiefly in agricultural produce and provisions, building materials, wood and industrial products. At Toulouse the canal connects with the Canal du Midi, which runs to the Mediterranean. After passing Castets the Garonne begins to widen out considerably, and from being 160 yds. broad at Agen increases to about 650 yds. at Bordeaux, its great commercial port. ”

“ Compared with the existing Canal de Midi, with its ninety-nine locks, either would be but a trifle. London is on the sea-level, and Paris is a small trifle above it. The barriers between the sea and either capital are inconsiderable. ”

“ In addition to the cost of carrying water was that of keeping the track clear of sand, which was drifted by the wind exactly as snow is drifted in the Northern States of America, and sometimes the working of the road was suspended for several days by the sand-drifts. The present railway follows the banks of the Maritime Canal as far as Ismailia, and thence it goes along the Fresh-Water Canal, of which I will tell you.
"The idea of a canal to connect the Mediterranean and Red Seas is by no means a modern one." ”

“ Next morning we are up on deck in good time, as we want to see all we can of the canal. We are by this time out in the wide water of the Bitter Lake, where we can go at a good speed, then the canal itself begins again and we pass one of the little station-houses where the signalmen live; it looks as if it was built out of a child's bricks, and stands on the arid banks with only a few scanty palms near. It must be a dreary sort of life for ever signalling to ships which are going onward to all countries of the world, while you yourself remain pinned down in the same few square yards of land. ”

“ The enlarged locks on the Canal du Centre can be filled or emptied in two minutes; and the passage of vessels through the locks takes less than half the original time.
Mr. E. J. Lloyd, speaking from experience of canals in the Midlands, is of opinion that a multiple of the present size of lock which prevails throughout the Midland district would be best. This would enable the existing craft on those canals, and also most of the barges on larger navigations, to be used in the most economical way possible. ”

“ The Middle Section rapidly became a busy avenue. Mile posts were erected throughout its length, the distance from Genesee Street in Utica to the lock into the Seneca River being a little more than ninety-six miles. Navigation began in May. Contracts were let for the Eastern Section that would insure the completion of the thirty miles from Utica to Minden within the year. The course of the canal through the Mohawk Valley was resurveyed, the experienced engineer Canvass White pushing it forward to Cohoes Falls. The great rock wall at Little Falls was now completed. ”

“ Most river navigations beyond the reach of tides, are impeded by shallows in summer, by floods in winter, by artificial rights of mills, drainages, &c., all of which are avoided by the Grand Junction Canal, which, availing itself of cross valleys, and perforating narrow ridges, has opened an inland navigation from the metropolis 11 to the British Channel, to the Irish Sea, and to the German Ocean. ”

“ In more recent times a great deal of the material that was once carried thus has been diverted to the railway ; but bulky country products such as firewood, palm leaves, cocoanut fibre, and bamboos are still transported by the leisurely barge that is towed and punted between the high banks of the canals and over the glassy water of the Cooum. Appearances are nowhere more deceptive than in the East. The canal looks an ideal stream for the house-boat, but it is hot and stifling. ”

“ The cost of the undertaking (estimated at 25,000,000l. to 30,000,000l.) , although a large sum, is not deemed to be too much for a great artificial river more than 300 miles long, 18 feet deep, 100 feet wide at the bottom, and having locks 450 feet long and 60 feet wide. These dimensions would enable the canal to float the largest vessels that navigate the great lakes from Lake Erie to the deep waters of the Hudson. ”

“ One is to build it and let the water in to the foot of the hill, and then to raise vessels over, the crest of the hill, and down the other side to where the canal again starts, by means of inclined planes, or marine railways.
The other method is by "locks," as they are called. That is, there are built a series of basins with powerful, water-tight gates dividing them. Boys who live along canals well know how locks work.
A boat comes along until it reaches the place where the lock is. It is floated into a basin, or section, of the waterway, and a gate is closed behind it. ”

“ Each of these three locks has, of course, a duplicate alongside, permitting, as at Gatun, the simultaneous passage of a companion vessel, or of one passing in the opposite direction. In case of repairs to one set of locks the parallel set would maintain the waterway.
The lift of the lower lock at Milaflores is variable, depending upon the level of the tidal water in the last reach of the Canal. The extreme range of the tide at La Boca, the Pacific entrance to the Canal, is 20 feet; that is to say, low water during "spring" tides is 10 feet below the average sea-level. ”

“ Our concern is with a matter of fact, and not with a theory. No ship-owner on the Great Lakes considers it a serious hindrance to navigation for vessels to pass through the lock of the "Soo" Canal; no shipper running 1,000-ton barges through the future Erie Canal will have the least apprehension of danger or destruction; no captain navigating a vessel or boat through the proposed deep waterway from the ocean to the Lakes will hesitate to pass through locks with a proposed lift of over forty feet. ”

“ I replied; "and for the sake of archæologists let us hope that these excavations will be made sooner or later, when new towns are established on the isthmus, after the construction of the Suez Canal; a canal, which, however, would be very useless to a vessel like the Nautilus."
"Very likely; but useful to the whole world," said Captain Nemo. "The ancients well understood the utility of a communication between the Red Sea and the Mediterranean for their commercial affairs; but they did not think of digging a canal direct, and took the Nile as an intermediary. ”

“ In 1861, the works were chiefly confined to digging wells along the line of the maritime canal, to erecting sheds for 10,000 labourers, and providing dock basins, water condensers, forges and workshops, steam saw-mills, and opening a water supply by a canal which should join the Nile to Lake Timsah. [255]
In 1862, the eastern mole at Port Said was begun, together with a landing stage 70 yards by 22, in 16 feet of water, and an arsenal dock 160 yards by 135 and 5 feet depth. Seven Arab villages were built, and north of Lake Timsah, a sea-water cutting was continued from Kantara to El Ferdane. ”

“ This great highway, a veritable marine strait, which is visited by sharks and cetaceans, and where are now intermingled the various flora and fauna of the Mediterranean and Red Sea, presents dimensions which at the time seemed prodigious, but which are already acknowledged to be inadequate. The canal, which is 98 miles long from sea to sea, and from 200 to 330 feet wide between the banks, has a depth nowhere less than 26 feet, and in some places nearly 28 feet. Dredges are constantly engaged, clearing out the sand and mud, which the wash of passing steamers causes to accumulate on the bottom. ”

“ Sometimes we meet a steamer coming north, and must moor in one of the passing stations, as the Canal is too narrow, except at these points, for large vessels to pass one another. All round us is the desert, though here and there we may see a small Arab village or perhaps a string of slow-moving camels, where the caravan route of the desert touches the line of the Canal. Towards the southern end of the waterway we pass 40 through the Bitter Lakes. At some very remote age there must have been a natural channel between the Mediterranean and the Red Sea ”

“ Lloyd thinks that the heavy cost involved in constructing canals of sufficient size to pass craft suitable for coasting and short continental voyages would be fatal to cheap conveyance.
The largest locks hitherto constructed are those on the St. Mary’s Falls Canal, in the United States, and the Welland Canal in Canada. On the former canal the lock opened in 1851 is 515 feet in length and 80 feet wide. The great tidal lock at Eastham, on the Manchester Ship Canal, will be 600 feet long and 80 feet wide. ”

“ There is one class of canals that seems to have held its own, that is ship canals. The great canal and locks at Sault Ste. Marie transfer a vast lake traffic annually from one level to another between Lakes Superior and Huron. Vast quantities of iron-ore are brought in mammoth vessels by this route from docks near the Mesaba mines for the great iron mills at Gary, at Cleveland, at Pittsburgh, and other points. Similar vessels loaded with wheat, oats, and flax from the Northwest grain fields are unloaded at Buffalo for transportation to the seaboard. ”

“ When Napoleon Buonaparte, at the time of the French expedition to Egypt, ordered a complete survey to be made of the isthmus between the Mediterranean and the Red Sea by M. Lépère, the latter proposed that vessels should ascend the Nile to Bubastis, and pass by a canal, 18 feet deep and 77 miles long, to the basin of the Bitter Lakes. Thence, a second canal, 13 miles in length, was to lead to the Red Sea. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The difficulty of clearing and keeping clear the channel at Port Said, at the Mediterranean end, is well known to the Pacha and his engineers:—it is not difficult, indeed, to cut through the bar, nor impossible to keep the cutting open, but the effect of the great piers will merely be to push the Nile silt farther seaward, and again and again new bars will form in front of the canal. That the canal is physically possible no one doubts, but it is hard to believe that it can pay. ”

“ It is kept in a much better state for navigation, so far as the depth of water is concerned, than the old canal, which from inattention is gradually shoaling in places; consequently the regular steam-packets which ply between Elizabeth City and Norfolk, as well as steamers whose destinations are further north, have given up the use of the Dismal Swamp Canal, and [150] now go round through Albemarle Sound up the North River, thence by a six-mile cut into Currituck Sound, up North Landing River, and through the new canal to the Elizabeth River and into Chesapeake Bay. ”

“ This enormous gain in efficiency, resulting from the avoidance of the slightest difference in level and from the reduction of force wasted in friction, suggested to people in early times the idea of establishing channels for water where none had previously existed, that is, of building canals. Locks, for controlling the flow and level of the water, were invented toward the end of the Middle Ages, and a considerable extent of canals had been constructed on the Continent before the Bridgewater canal, described above, was opened in England. ”

“ A bridge across the Atlantic or a tunnel underneath it could scarcely provoke more sneers today. Yet the summer of 1817 saw the rows of stakes driven into the ground—over hill and vale, through densest forest and sickliest swamp, from east to west; the outer rows were sixty feet apart and indicated the space to be [Pg 114] grubbed; between these were two other rows forty feet apart which indicated the exact dimensions of the canal; a single row of stakes in the middle marked the exact center of the canal. ”

“ Engineers of the highest standing at home and abroad have expressed themselves for or against one type or the other, but it is a question upon which no complete agreement is possible. In theory a sea-level canal has unquestionable advantages, but, practically, the elements of cost and time necessary for the construction preclude to-day, as they did in 1894, when the New Canal Company recommenced active operations, the building of a sea-level canal. ”

“ Too great praise cannot be given to the engineers and constructors of these canals. Brindley considered canals not as adjuncts of rivers and bays, on the contrary “rivers were only meant,” he said, “to feed canals.” He carried this canal by means of an aqueduct over the river to Manchester, thus bringing the coal to a new thriving manufacturing city. Green further says (Paragraph 1528)
To English trade the canal opened up the richest of all markets, the market of England itself. ”

“ They advance a number of specific reasons why a lock canal when completed will for all practical purposes—commercial, military, and naval—be a better canal than a sea-level waterway with a tidal lock, as proposed by the majority members of the Board. ”