THE CANALS : A GLORY OF FRANCE 



BY 



J. J. Jusserand, French Ambassador at Washington 



COME nineteen hundred years ago. a 

 ^ small town existed in a small isl- 

 and 'of a little known river. The town 

 being surrounded by water, its princi- 

 pal corporation was that of the boat- 

 men ; they had placed themselves under 

 the protection of Jupiter and dedicated 

 an altar to him. The altar still exists; 

 it was discovered in the eighteenth cen- 

 tury under the choir of Xotre Dame ; 

 for the little town I speak of was soon 

 to outgrow its island and was to he- 

 come Paris, the capital of France ; and 

 now, I venture to say, a "city of 

 renown." 



After a good many centuries, when 

 the fashion came for armorial bearings 

 and emblems, Paris, continuing the 

 same traditions, chose for emblem a 

 ship, with the famous motto, "I-'litctnat 

 ncc inergitiir." Tempests may toss but 

 shall never sink her ; which has proven 

 true, throughout ages, of the ship, of 

 the town, and of the country too. 

 What tempests, what hard days, what 

 dangers ! And yet the ship is afloat ; 

 very much so. 



In these facts can be detected, as it 

 were, an omen of what was to follow. 

 The patient, hard-working, careful 

 French people, believed by some to 

 spend all their time in reading novels, 

 singing songs and amusing themselves, 

 could not fail to do for waterways 

 what they did for roadways, and so it 

 is that the development given by them 

 to their inland harbors and canals has 

 secured for me the honor of address- 

 ing this brilliant assembly of conscien- 

 tious, painstaking and patriotic Ameri- 

 cans. And I owe it also, perhaps, to 

 the remembrance that the biggest canal 

 in the world, one dreamt of by Greek, 

 Roman and Moslem, one which Mar- 

 lowe's Tamburlaine, dying, regretted 

 not to have opened, the Suez Canal, 

 was planned by a Frenchman, executed 

 by Frenchmen, and built in ten years, 

 from 1859 to 1869. At the entrance of 



it stands a characteristic statue of that 

 model of energy, Lesscps, \\-ho points 

 to the canal and seems to say : "The 

 canal an impossibility? lie so good as 

 to look : there it i> !" 



\Ye hold the record for the present ; 

 you will hold it in your turn when tin- 

 great Panama Canal is finished ; we 

 turned the first sod; you will turn the 

 last; and no OIK- will applaud more 

 heartily than your predecessors. 



Apart fn>in the-e great attempts ben- 

 efitting mankind at large rather than 

 any single country. France has done 

 good work indeed on her own soil. 

 From the Renaissance, when the use of 

 locks was first invented, the great plan 

 was started which was to connect. 

 through mountains and valleys, al 1 the 

 rivers of France and all the oceans and 

 seas washing her shores. First it was 

 the canal of Briare, connecting the 

 Seine and the Loire, begun by Henry 

 the Fourth's great minister. Sully, in 

 11105; then it was the great canal of 

 Languedoc, connecting the Atlantic 

 Ocean and the Mediterranean, built in 

 eighteen years by Riquet, under Louis 

 the Fourteenth, and one of the glories 

 ' if the reign. It long remained a model 

 one. and caused the admiration of tra- 

 velers. Visiting France more than a 

 century later, Arthur Young, the fa- 

 mous English economist, wrote: "The 

 canal of Languedoc is the capital fea- 

 ture of all the country. It is 

 a noble and stupendous work ; goes 

 through the hill about the breadth of 

 three toises (19.18 ft.) * * * Xine 

 sluice-gates let the water down the hill 

 to join the river at Beziers. A noble 

 work! Many vessels were at 

 the quay, some in motion, and every 

 sign of animated business. This is the 

 best sight I have seen in France. Here, 

 Louis XIV. thou art truly great! Here 

 with a generous and benignant hand 

 thou dispensest ease and wealth to thy 

 people." And as Young was writing 



^Address before the National Rivers and Harbors Congress, at Washington, D. 

 C., December 4, 1907. 



