432 TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION E. 
stand right, in this case, by constructing a giant dam over 200 feet high 
across a gorge through which the river Hows, a long narrow lake has 
been or is being called into existence. <A _ still larger volume of water is 
gathered by the great Assouan dam, which holds up the Nile at the head of 
the Tirst Cataract, washing, and at times submerging, the old temples on the 
Island of Phila in mid-stream. First completed in 1902, the dam was enlarged 
and heightened by 1912; and the result of the dam is at the time of high 
Nile to create a lake of some 65 square miles in area, as well as to fill up the 
channel of the river for many miles up stream. [Illustrations of artificial lakes 
might be multiplied from irrigation works in India. An official report on the 
State of Hyderabad, written some years ago, has the following reference to the 
tanks in the granitic country of that State : ‘There are no natural lakes, but from 
the earliest times advantage has been taken of the undulating character of the 
country to dam up some low ground or gorge between two hills, above which the 
drainage of a large area is collected. ‘Such artificial reservoirs are peculiar to the 
granitic country, and wherever groups of granite hills occur tanks are sure to be 
found associated with them.’ Take again the great ship canals. The Suez Canal 
runs for 100 miles from sea to sea, though for part of its course it runs through 
water, not through sand. It is constantly growing in depth and width. Its 
original depth was 26; feet; it is now, for nine-tenths of its length, over 
36 feet, and the canal is to be further deepened generally to over 39 feet. Its 
original width at the bottom was 72 feet; it is now, for most of its course, 
over 147 feet; in other words, the width has been more than doubled. <A 
writer in the Zimes on the wonderful Panama Canal said: ‘The locks and 
the Gatun dam have entailed a far larger displacement of the earth’s surface 
than has ever been attempted by the hand of man in so limited a space.’ 
Outside the locks the depth is 45 feet, and the minimum bottom width 300 feet. 
The official handbook of the Panama Canal says: ‘ It is a lake canal as well as 
a lock canal, its dominating feature being Gatun Lake, a great body of water 
covering about 164 square miles.’ The canal is only fifty miles long from open sea 
to open sea, from shore line to shore line only forty. But, in making it, man, the 
geographical agency, has blocked the waters of a river, the Chagres river, by 
building up a ridge which connects the two lines of hills between which the 
river flows, this ridge being a dam 14 miles long, nearly half a mile wide at 
its base, and rising to 105 feet above sea-level, with the result that a lake has 
come into existence which is three-quarters of the size of the Lake of Geneva, 
and extends beyond the limits of the Canal zone. When all the sluices are 
open, a greater volume of water passes through them than comes over the Falls 
of Niagara. 
Mr. Marsh, in his book, referred to far more colossal schemes for turning 
land into water, such as flooding the African Sahara or cutting a canal from 
the Mediterranean to the Jordan and thus submerging the basin of the Dead 
Sea, which is below the level of the ocean. The effect of the latter scheme, he 
estimated, would be to add from 2,000 to 3,000 square miles to the fluid surface 
of Syria. All that can be said is that the wild-cat schemes of one century often 
become the domesticated possibilities of the next and the accomplished facts of 
the third; that the more discovery of new lands passes out of sight the more 
men’s energies and imagination will be concentrated upon developing and 
altering what is in their keeping; and that, judging from the past, no un- 
scientific man can safely set any limit whatever to the future achievements 
of science. 
Buf now, given that the proportion of land to water and water to land has 
not been, and assuming that it will not be, appreciably altered, has water, for 
practical purposes, encroached on land, or land on water? Inmany cases water 
transport has encroached on land transport. The great isthmus canals are an 
obvious instance; so are the great Canadian canals. The tonnage passing 
through the locks of the Sault St. Marie is greater than that which is carried 
through the Suez Canal. Waterways are made where there was dry land, and 
more often existing inland waterways are converted into sea-going ways. 
Manchester has become a seaport through its Ship Canal. The Clyde, in Mr. 
Vernon Harcourt’s words, written in 1895, has been ‘converted from an insig- 
nificant stream into a deep navigable river capable of giving access to ocean- 
going vessels of large draught up to Glasgow.’ In 1758 the Clyde at low water 
