33 



by the Government for nearly $3,500,000, or about $80 per 

 acre. The success of this grand experiment has prompted 

 others, like the draining of the Zuid Plas a lake covering 

 nearly 12,000 acres, and the great work now progressing to 

 drain an arm of the Sheld, which will recover some 35,000 

 acres. Encouraged by the results of these enterprises, the 

 Netherlandish engineers now advocate the stupendous project 

 of draining the great salt water basin of the Zuiderzee an 

 inland sea which covers 1,300,000 acres. The Italians have 

 nearly completed the work of enlarging and deepening the 

 tunnel cut by the Emperor Claudius 1800 years ago, to drain 

 Lake Celano. 30,000 workmen were employed on this sub- 

 tearanean passage for eleven years. Though this remarkable 

 undertaking the wonder of that age was successful, in the 

 following reign it fell into disrepair and continued to be neg- 

 lected for centuries. It is one of many proofs of the revived 

 energy and enterprise of the present generation, rivaling their 

 historic ancestors, that they have restored and surpassed this 

 old Eoman work. This new tunnel, more than four miles in 

 length and costing over six millions of dollars, will ultimately 

 recover for agricultural occupation forty-two thousand acres of 

 most fertile land. Already some 36,000 acres of rich arable 

 land have been reclaimed, on which the crops yield a profit of 

 from thirty to thirty-six per cent. 



While it is interesting to know the extent and success of 

 lake drainage in the old world, in our country with millions of 

 acres of virgin soil, such expenditures would be unwise. But 

 in New England and the Atlantic States there are large tracts 

 of bogs and swamps that may be easily and economically 

 reclaimed by drainage. The hygienic advantages of stopping 

 malarious exhalations from stagnant pools would be clear gain. 

 This practice has been common in Europe for a long period. 

 When the works now in progress in Hungary are completed, 

 that country will have over a million acres of swamp land 

 drained and brought under cultivation. Many thousand acres 

 have thus been recently improved in Italy and similar works 

 are now progressing in France and elsewhere in Europe. Much 

 has lately been done in the same direction on our New Jersey 

 sea coast, along the shore of Lake Michigan and somewhat in 



