. William H. Seward's travels around the world. th.—Anchoring off the left bank river in very deep water, and taking the ships boats, we madean entrance, not without difficulty, into the Imperial Canal. Take its story briefly, to understand better what little we saw :Built in the thirteenth century, it is a monument equally of thegreatness and of the wisdom of Kublai-Khan. Its length is sixhundred and fifty miles, nearly twice that of the Erie Canal. De-signed for irrigation as well as navigation, it varies in width fromtwo hundred feet to two thousand feet. It is not, like our canals,b
. William H. Seward's travels around the world. th.—Anchoring off the left bank river in very deep water, and taking the ships boats, we madean entrance, not without difficulty, into the Imperial Canal. Take its story briefly, to understand better what little we saw :Built in the thirteenth century, it is a monument equally of thegreatness and of the wisdom of Kublai-Khan. Its length is sixhundred and fifty miles, nearly twice that of the Erie Canal. De-signed for irrigation as well as navigation, it varies in width fromtwo hundred feet to two thousand feet. It is not, like our canals,built by excavation, but with artificial dikes raised on an alluvialsoil, its banks and bottom paved and cemented. Instead of locks,there are inclined planes. Every abutment, flood-gate, and bridge,is of solid granite masonry. The Imperial Canal, like the ErieCanal, is not an isolated channel, but only the main artery of asystem of artificial navigation, the aggregate length of whoseparts is four thousand miles, while they penetrate every one. mtimm. Hflillllillr: IK Jill THE IMPERIAL CANAL. 225 of the eighteen provinces of the empire. The canal is compactly?crowded with junks. We conld not make our way into it ayards length, without waiting for a movement of the vesselsfor our accommodation. Our appeals to the boatmen for this?courtesy were not unkindly received, though the result was ascene of wild and noisy disturbance. We soon became con-vinced that, in our small boats,, we were in danger of beingcrushed between junks, even though nothing should occur to pro-duce misunderstanding or disturbance. We returned, therefore,to the ships;deck, as cautiously as possible. In that position wetraced the course of the canal high, though not dry, aboveground four miles. The shipping through that distance was asdense as at the mouth. The offices of the managers and toll-col-lectors cover the banks, while an armed fleet rides at the mouth ofthe canal, to prevent piracy and smuggling. We
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Keywords: ., bookcentury180, bookdecade1870, booksubjectvoyagesaroundtheworld
