Waterways and Water Transport in Different Countries by J. Stephen Jeans

from the sea, all the advantages of a seaboard, and especially that of removing and despatching merchandise without the necessity of breaking bulk. The second great stage in the development of canal transport is of comparatively recent origin. It may, in fact, be said to date only from the time when the construction of a canal across the Isthmus of Suez was proved to be not only practicable as an engineering project, but likewise highly successful as a commercial enterprise. Not that this was by any means the first canal of its kind. On the contrary, as we have shown elsewhere, the ancients had many schemes of a similar kind in view across the same isthmus. The canal of Languedoc, constructed in the reign of Louis XIV., was for that day as considerable an undertaking. It was designed for the purpose of affording a safe and speedy means of communication between the Mediterranean and the Atlantic Ocean; it has a total length of 148 miles, is in its highest