38 THE HISTORY AND ECONOMIC VALUE OP CANALS. 



Following the centuries for 2,000 years, we find the great Rameses, 

 Necho, Ptolemy Philadelphus and Trajan, engaged in building up Egypt, 

 and extending its influence beyond the sands of the Nile, and ultimately 

 to the remotest part of the Roman Empire. 



If we turn our attention toward Central Asia, we note the civilization 

 of China thoroughly aroused to deep-water transportation as early as 

 the seventh century, the advanced inventive genius of the Orient giving 

 to canals the first "inclined plane," and, through a perfected system, open- 

 ing the interior and providing it a vent to the sea. 



Turning toward Europe we discover the earliest canals in the twelfth 

 century, when Leonardo de Vinci built the first Italian lock and the Dutch 

 constructed waterways through the marshes of the Netherlands. From 

 these came the enlarged channels to ports, reclaimed from the sea, and from 

 these ports a resultant commerce and navy which disputed with England 

 the supremacy of the ocean. 



France in the seventeenth century built the Briere Canal and supple- 

 mented it by the Eanquedoc, with its elevation of 600 feet, its tunnel of 700 

 feet, and a length of 148 miles. That country, through its magnificent 

 perfected system, is to-day able to place its manufactures at a minimum 

 rate, although Germany during the past twenty years has been striving to 

 outrival her. 



In England the first known canal was built by the Romans from 

 Lincoln to the Trent. Abandoned at times, it was deepened in 1840 and 

 still exists. Small of area, that country did not feel the need of interior 

 waterways as greatly as her larger neighbors, and yet in the early part of 

 the nineteenth century she built many. Today she is sending the manu- 

 factures of an over-crowded interior to her vast colonial systems through 

 the Manchester and Caledonian canals, while the channel which she controls 

 at Suez — conceived by the Frenchman De Lesseps, at or near the site chosen 

 by Napoleon in his endeavor to recreate the former power of Egypt — and 

 the one at Corinth testify to a far-sighted policy of shortening the marine 

 routes of the world. 



II. 



Keeping in view the countless ages of the past, let us trace the history 

 of canals in this country, remembering that it is only 186 years since DoUier 

 de Casson, a French priest, advocated river improvement at the spot where 

 the Lachine Canal exists to-day, and that the first actual canal was con- 

 structed as late as 1750 in Orange County, New York. 



