

ENGINEERING. 



311 



more ; her frail appearance is, as it 

 were, a witness of the hidden fires 

 that burn within. Fanny dances to 

 subdue and to charm. Taglioni 

 shows us the dance of heaven ; 

 Fanny Elssler wins the love of mor- 

 tals : if the one is a sister of the 

 angels, the other is the most ador- 

 able of the daughters of earth." 



In 1841 the sisters came to the 

 United States, where their fame 

 had preceded them. Enthusiastic 

 crowds detached the horses and 

 drew their carriage through the 

 streets, the theatre was crowded 

 night after night, and like many 

 other European performers they 

 reaped a golden harvest in America. 

 Afterward they visited Russia, and 

 finally danced again in Vienna, 

 where they bade farewell to the 

 stage. Therese became the mor- 

 ganatic wife of Prince Adalbert of 

 Prussia in 1851, and died in 1878. 

 She was tall and powerful, was 

 popularly called " the majestic," 

 and was to a large extent Fanny's 

 instructor. At the same time that 

 the elder sister married, Fanny re- 

 tired with her large fortune to a 

 villa near Hamburg, where she 

 passed most of the remainder of her life. 



ENGINEERING. In consequence of the gen- 

 eral depression of all branches of industry, few 

 large works were planned, either in this coun- 

 try or abroad, during 1884, nor have any of 

 the great enterprises begun years ago been 

 brought to completion. But work is steadily 

 going on in many quarters, carrying forward 

 such undertakings as the Panama Canal. The 

 engineering world has not been startled by 

 any great discoveries, though it has continued 

 to make good progress in the improvement of 

 details in methods and appliances, and in the 

 most effective use of materials. Concerning 

 the latter, the growing tendency in favor of 

 steel for structural purposes may be particu- 

 larly noted. The metallurgist, the chemist, 

 and the engineer are working harmoniously 

 and successfully in defining the adaptability of 

 that material to specific purposes, in increas- 

 ing our stock of knowledge as to its character- 

 istics, and the best methods of handling and 

 shaping it. It is gradually but surely replac- 

 ing iron, notably for bridge-work and in naval 

 architecture, a steady lowering of the price go- 

 ing hand in hand with greater uniformity and 

 reliability in quality. 



Enlargement of the Suez ana1. The enlarge- 

 ment of the Suez Canal was delinitely decided 

 upon during 1884, after long-continued nego- 

 tiations and a report by the International Con- 

 sultative Commission. Until now, only small 

 vessels could pass one another in motion, the 

 depth near the banks being too small for larger 

 ships. The latter have been forced to enter 



FANNY EL8SLEK. 



one of the "gares" provided at intervals, a 

 system that greatly retarded navigation. The 

 engineers of the canal have based their esti- 

 mates of the needed width to secure uninter- 

 rupted sailing, upon the fact that the largest 

 ship, the Austral, that has yet passed through 

 the canal, has a forty-eight-foot beam and is 

 456 feet long. They assume that if vessels 

 of such size are to pass one another in mo- 

 tion there should be a space equal to two clear 

 beams between them, and an interval of thirty 

 to thirty-five feet between their outer sides and 

 the line of buoys. This means a channel about 

 230 feet broad at the bottom, which is consid- 

 ered sufficient for the straight reach of the 

 canal south of Port Said. For the curves and 

 for the Suez end, where the tide of the Red 

 Sea produces a current, an increased breadth 

 of 262 feet is proposed, which would permit 

 of a partial rectification of the curves. It is 

 urged that such a width, giving a minimum 

 channel of 115 feet for each vessel, instead of 

 the seventy-foot width of course now insisted 

 upon, would be ample, since the bed of the 

 Clyde is only 220 feet broad, and still vessels 

 pass one another in motion without serious 

 trouble. By this enlargement of the canal, an 

 increase in the speed to 6-^ knots an hour is 

 believed to be readily attainable, and it has 

 been estimated that the saving in the time 

 taken to pass through the canal, when it is 

 enlarged, will be about twenty -four hours. 

 The cost of a channel twenty-seven feet deep 

 has been estimated at 9,850,000, a sum that 

 would be increased to 10,831, 000 if the depth 



