542 KANSAS CITY REVIEW OF SCIENCE. 



SOME GREAT ENGINEERING PROJECTS. 



The shortening of commercial routes by means of ship-railways and ship- 

 canals seems to be the great ambition of the engineers of to-day. 



In addition to the De Lesseps Ship-Canal at Panama, the Eads Ship-Railway 

 at Tehuantepec, the Florida Ship-Canal, the Chesapeake and Delaware Ship- 

 Canal, the Cape Cod Canal, and others in the interior of this country, there are 

 several other important projects of like nature under way or in prospect in various 

 parts of the world. The old project of connecting the Bay of Fundy and Baie 

 Verte, on the Gulf of St. Lawrence, across the Isthmus of Chignecto, has lately 

 taken new form. It is now proposed to make the connection by a ship-railway 

 eighteen miles long, thus making a short-cut for navigation between the United 

 States and the ports on the St. Lawrence Gulf and River, and saving the long 

 and dangerous voyage around Nova Scotia. 



The projector of the ship-railway, Mr. H. G. C. Ketchum, writes us that 

 the plan grew out of a desire to save lockage and a deep channel in the design of 

 the Baie Verte Canal. His first plan was to lift vessels by hydraulic power on 

 pontoons and then float them through the canal. The idea then occurred that 

 they might as well be lifted to the surface of the ground and hauled across the 

 neck of land on rails. The road may be level and perfectly straight from end to 

 end. The plan has been submitted to the Dominion Government and is favora- 

 bly entertained. Mr. Ketchum has issued an interesting pamphlet relative to 

 the project, which may be considered at greater length elsewhere. 



Across the ocean the construction of the tunnel under the British Channel, 

 connecting England with the Continent, is being prosecuted with an energy which 

 is indicative of ultimate success, and thus far no obstacles have been encountered 

 to make the undertaking a difficult or exceptionally hazardous one. 



In France, the connection of the Atlantic with the Mediterranean by a ship- 

 canal, to save the long and stormy voyage around the Spanish Peninsula, is under 

 serious consideration, and the Council-General of the Seine have just adopted a 

 resolution approving of the project. 



The ship-canal across the Isthmus of Corinth, in Greece, to shorten the 

 route to Constantinople and the ports of the Black Sea, has, we believe, been 

 definitely determined upon. 



In the far East a bolder and more important project is in contemplation, 

 with a view to shortening the commercial route to China and Japan by six hun- 

 dred miles or more. At the head of the Malay Peninsula is the Isthmus of Kraw, 

 connecting Upper with Lower Siam ; and by the cutting of a ship-canal at this 

 point, about thirty miles in length, the need of sailing around the peninsula 

 might be obviated. At Kraw, the Malayan Peninsula, which stretches south- 

 ward for five hundred miles to Singapore, is at its narrowest breadth, and the 

 distance across from the side of the Indian Ocean to that of the China Seas is 

 further^decreased by the existence of natural water-ways for some distance inland 



