There is perhaps no country that enjoys greater facilities of transport than Germany, relatively to its area, its population, and its commerce. This happy condition of things is due, partly to the fostering care of a paternal government, which has taken transportation under its special care, and controls by far the larger part of the ways of communication both by land and water; partly to the competition, at low rates of freight, between railways, rivers, and canals; and partly to the close attention which has been given by traders, economists, and engineers to the problems that determine the ultimate economy of transport under different conditions. With a railway system that has now been completed to the extent of 25,000 miles, with 17,000 miles of rivers, and with 1250 miles of canal navigation that is soon likely to be considerably increased, the German Empire offers facilities for the study of the transportation problem that entitle it to the serious attention of all who are interested in the matter. This is all the more obvious that Germany, although possessed of very moderate natural resources otherwise, has attained a front rank among commercial nations. _River Systems._—The chief river systems of Germany are those of the Rhine, draining an area of 76,000 square miles, and having a course of 850 miles; the Elbe, which drains an area of 55,000 square miles, and is, next to the Rhine, the most important of the German rivers; the Oder, which has a drainage basin of 50,000 square miles, and a course of 550 miles; the Vistula, which rises in the Carpathian mountains, 2000 feet above sea level, has a drainage area of 74,000 square miles, and a length of 600 miles; the Niemen, which has a drainage area conterminous with that of the Düna, and of about the same extent, i. e., 35,000 square miles; the Weser, which has a drainage area of 18,000 square miles, and a course of 355 miles; with the Ems and one or two smaller streams. The flow of the chief streams is as follows:— River. Sea. The Danube The Black Sea. Rhine, Elbe, and Weser The North Sea. Vistula, Oder, Memel, and Pregel The Baltic. Of the Danube we shall speak at some length when we come to deal with the waterways of Austria, to which that river mainly belongs. But most of the other rivers of Germany have been more or less canalised, and we shall therefore refer to some of the changes thereby effected in river transport.