Navigation of the Rhi?ie. 313 



river, or the country over which its branches extend, includes 

 an area of 70, 000 English miles, and is inhabited by 14,000,000 

 of persons. The navigation extends without interruption to 

 Schaffhausen, 500 miles from the sea, but above Manheim it 

 is much obstructed by islands and shoals. From the sea to 

 Cologne, a distance of 160 miles, there are, according to the 

 German writer, ten or twelve feet of water ; and he adds, that 

 the river, deriving its water chiefly from the melting of Alpine 

 snows, is deeper in summer than in winter. Cogan informs 

 us, that from Cologne to Mentz, a distance of one hundred 

 miles, the river is navigated by shallow vessels of one hundred 

 or one hundred and fifty feet long, by 30 or 40 feet in breadth, 

 and drawing about five feet water, which are sometimes tracked 

 and sometimes impelled by sails. From Mentz up to Basle in 

 Switzerland, according to information we received two years 

 ago (from a gentleman who had made inquiries on the subject, 

 with a view to the introduction of steam navigation), nearly 

 the same depth might be obtained ; but the numerous shoals, 

 islands, and rocks, render the channel intricate. Were a short 

 canal made at Schaffhausen (where the fall is only 50 feet 

 high), the line of inland navigation for small sailing vessels 

 might be extended to the head of the Lake of Constance, and 

 the produce of the Alpine valleys of Switzerland and Bavaria 

 might be conveyed by water to Holland or England. Its larger 

 branches too, the Maes, the Moselle, the Mayne, the Neckar, 

 &c. are generally navigable to some distance from the mouths. 

 Were such a magnificent natural canal placed in the midst of 

 fourteen millions of Englishmen or Americans, it would be the 

 theatre of the most multifarious and animated internal com- 

 merce on the face of the globe. But the people want enter- 

 prise, capital, and a commercial spirit ; and, what is still worse, 

 they are parcelled out among half a score of different princes, 

 who harass the trade of each other's subjects by imposts and 

 retaliatory restrictions ; and who all unite in oppressing the 

 foreign trader, by heavy exactions. " Nothing," says Riesbeck, 

 " displays the constitution of the German empire in a better 

 light than the navigation of the Rhine. Every prince, so far as 

 his domain on the banks extends, considers the ships that pass 

 as the vessels of foreigners, and loads them without distinction, 

 with almost intolerable taxes. In the 1 2th and 1 3th centuries, 

 the princes of the Rhine compelled the emperors to give them 

 so many customs as to make every city a custom-house ; ori- 

 ginally all the customs belonged to the emperors, but the want 

 of men, money, and other services, obliged them to part with 

 most of them to purchase friends. While the anarchy lasted, 

 every one took by force what was not given him by free will, 

 Vol. 68. No. 342. Oct. 1826. 2 R and 



