It is proposed to connect the Danube with the North Sea by a new canal, 273 kilometres in length, which is referred to at p. 130. This canal, if constructed, will, like the Prussian canal system generally, be 21 metres in width, 2 metres deep, and have locks 8·60 metres wide and 55 metres long. These will admit barges carrying 600 tons. The other principal rivers of Austria-Hungary include the Pregel, the Elbing, the Vistula, and the Oder, inclined to the Baltic; the Elbe, the Saale, the Moldau, the Weser, the Ems, the Main, the Neckar, inclined to the North Sea; and the Pruth, the Theiss, the Temes, the Inn, and the Iser, inclined, like the Danube, to the Black Sea. About a dozen waterways, mostly small, are also inclined to the Adriatic. In Hungary, there are two canals of importance—the first being the Bega, which joins Temesvar with the Theiss at Tetal, a little above its junction with the Danube, and has a total length of 75 miles; while the other is the Franz Josef Canal, extending for a distance of 69 miles, from the Danube at Battina by Zombor, to the Theiss near Foldvar. The great waterway of Hungary is, however, the Lower Danube, which is navigated by the Imperial and Royal Danube Steam Navigation Company. About 800 barges are employed for this purpose, the greater number having a carrying power of 250 tons. The improvements that have been made on this stream, under the Commission appointed for that purpose, between 1860 and 1883 have tended to increase the trade from 680,000 gross tons in 1859 to 1,530,000 tons in 1883, and to lower the charges on shipping from an average of 20_s._ per ton for lighterage before the deepening of the Sulina mouth to less than 2_s._ per ton register at the present time. Sir Charles Hartley claims that the Danube improvement works had, up to 1884, effected a saving of over 20 millions sterling.[109] FOOTNOTES: [109] ‘Inland Navigations in Europe,’ p. 155. CHAPTER XV. THE WATERWAYS OF THE UNITED STATES. “The Erie Canal, conceived by the genius, and achieved by the energy of De Witt Clinton, was, during the second quarter of this century, the most potent influence of American progress and civilisation. It developed the north-west, by giving an outlet to the commerce of the great lakes, and it made New York the Empire State, and New York City the imperial mart of the New World.” —_E. Sweet, in the Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers for 1884._