350 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1907. 
though whether that trade is still carried on I am unable to say. 
Through the courtesy of the Intercontinental Railway Company and 
of Mr. Ernest de Rodakowski, author of “The Channel Ferry,” an 
extremely interesting and instructive work written to advocate carry- 
ing on trade without break of bulk between this country and the con- 
tinent by a method not open to the objections urged against the pro- 
posed Channel tunnel, I am able to illustrate this important point by 
some lantern slides which, I think, will speak largely for themselves. 
The first shows how the trade in imported meat is carried on be- 
tween Southampton and London. The meat, on being taken out of 
the importing ship, is transferred, not to railway trucks, but to lorries 
or road wagons mounted on the trucks. Each truck is capable of car- 
rying 10 tons, but as the pair of lorries has a weight of between 3 and 
4 tons, it is clear that there must thus be a considerable addition to the 
dead weight hauled, even though the trucks are reduced to a simple 
platform mounted on wheels, and on the return journey to Southamp- 
ton the whole train is dead weight, as no suitable freight for the carts 
can be found. Yet the mere saving in handling has caused this mode 
of transport to be carried on with satisfactory results to the company 
for about seventeen years. 
My second illustration is one of a channel ferryboat, such as was 
familiar to me in my boyhood in the early sixties as plying between 
Granton and Burntisland under the name of “leviathans.” The 
width of the crossing effected by those boats was only 5 miles, but 
since then the same method of transport has been adopted for cross- 
ings up to 96 miles (the widest being from Ludington to Milwau- 
kee, on Lake Michigan). The present view shows the Solano on the 
passage from Oakland to San Francisco, a boat which carries on its 
four rail tracks twenty-seven passenger cars or forty-two goods 
wagons of the ordinary large American type. 
The third illustration shows the method by which the trucks are 
landed on the Warnemiinde-Gjedser route between Germany and 
Denmark, opened on October 1, 1903, with reference to which I am 
able to give some particulars of direct significance regarding the 
subject now in hand. In the first place, I am informed that the 
wagon marked “ Breslau ” actually came from Breslau, a distance of 
some 350 miles from Warnemiinde, 375 miles from Gjedser, and 480 
miles from Copenhagen, for which it was not improbably destined. 
Now, if it was for Copenhagen, that was a journey on which an all- 
water route was available, first by means of a river accommodating 
boats of 400 tons burden to Stettin (305 miles), and then by seagoing 
vessels. Yet the rail route was preferred. On one occasion on which 
Mr. E. de Rodakowski accompanied the train, only six minutes 
elapsed between the arrival at Warnemiinde and the departure of the 
steamer. The goods carried on that occasion were chiefly angle 
