The North Sea Canal is 61 miles long, 200 ft. wide at the surface, 85 ft. wide at the bottom, and it will admit of vessels of 10,000 tons register passing through, the average time of transit being about twelve hours. The estimated cost of this undertaking was nearly eight and a quarter million pounds sterling, and about one-third of this sum was contributed by Germany, for whom the canal is of the greatest strategic importance in case of war, for her fighting ships need not then traverse foreign waters. The construction was therefore pushed forward with unusual energy, as many as 8,600 men having been engaged on the works at one time. An important naval station already exists at Kiel, the Baltic end of the canal, where there is a splendid harbour. The engineer and designer of this water-way is Herr Otto Baensch, who has devised much ingenious machinery in connection with the immense tidal locks at the extremities of the canal, and the swing bridges by which several lines of railway are carried across it. In the construction of this canal there were no vast engineering difficulties to be overcome, and hence striking feats of mountain excavation or valley bridging are not to be met with in its course, though in places there are some deep cuttings. The methods of excavating and of steam dredging that were made use of have already been illustrated in relation to the other works described in this article. The country through which the canal passes does not present any unusually picturesque features.
_THE PANAMA AND NICARAGUA CANAL PROJECTS._
The several undertakings described in our chapter on Ship Canals are now all completed and in active operation, and but for financial mis-management and dishonest speculations, the same might probably have been said of another great project, the name of which was on everyone’s lips a short time ago, but in which public interest has lately waned; perhaps from a mistaken impression that the construction itself is involved in a common ruin with the fortunes of so many of its promoters, or that the scheme was frustrated by some unforeseen and insurmountable engineering difficulties. These assumptions have so little justification that it is quite probable that Lesseps’ last great project may yet be completed under more favourable auspices, and the Panama Canal unite the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. The Panama Canal Company still exists, and possesses not only a very large part of the work almost quite finished, but all the extensive plant in perfect condition for resuming operations. The original scheme provided for a tidal water-way between the two oceans, without the intervention of a single lock. The canal was to be nearly 47 miles in length, 100 feet wide at the surface of the water, 72 feet wide at the bottom, and 29 feet deep. The entrances are at Colon on the Atlantic side, and at Panama on the Pacific. The latter is the eastern extremity, and the western one is on the Atlantic side, owing to the configuration of the isthmus which curves round the Panama Gulf that opens to the south. A railway crosses the isthmus between the points already named, and the route of the canal is laid down almost parallel with this railway, from which it is nowhere far distant. For the first 20 miles from the Atlantic side the land is only at a very moderate elevation above the sea-level, say 25 or 30 feet, but the next 11 miles is more hilly, the elevations reaching at some points 150 to 170 feet, but these are only for short distances. A few miles farther on, they rise still higher, until at Culebra the highest point is met with, about 323 feet above the sea-level, and a cut of this depth, 1,000 feet long, would be required. Through this highest part it has been proposed to drive a tunnel, but the total extent of the deep cutting at this part of the canal would be nearly 2 miles in length. This would no doubt be a work of the most formidable magnitude, for it has been calculated that no less than 24,000,000 cubic yards of material, consisting for the most part of solid rock, would have to be removed. It is not supposed, however, to offer any great difficulty in an engineering point of view. Doubtless it would be costly, and would take some time to accomplish. Another heavy piece of work would consist in constructions for controlling a mountain torrent called the Rio Chagres, through the valley of which the canal passes. This stream is very variable in the quantity of water it discharges, rising in the rainy season 45 feet above its ordinary level, and sending down forty times as much water as it does in the dry season.