If we cast our eyes over the rest of the European Continent we shall find that wherever artificial waterways have been provided, Royal or Imperial encouragement has assisted in the operation. Peter the Great and Catherine attached the utmost importance to the development of Russia by this means. In Sweden, Gustavus Vasa and his successors were equally solicitous, in a country full of natural waterways, that these should be utilised and connected by artificial means. A system that has been instrumental in giving to Europe such towns as Amsterdam, Rotterdam, and Venice, which has facilitated the progress of commerce in a hundred different directions, which was practically the only means of transport for nearly a century in all the chief countries of the world, and which still makes provision for the interchange of commodities at a cheaper rate than any other; which has involved the expenditure of hundreds of millions, and has found employment for vast numbers of well-remunerated _employés_; which abridges distance and time, and brings into closer contact different districts and countries, seas and oceans; which has engaged the attention of the greatest potentates and princes of recorded history, and has in all times been deemed a fit subject for the exercise of kingcraft; which, in our more prosaic age, brings us cheap food, cheap coal, and cheap commodities generally—such a system is one that can hardly be lightly esteemed, even now, notwithstanding that its waning light has been eclipsed by the brilliance of that other system which has been so marked a development of our nineteenth century civilisation. Canal engineering, besides, has a very remarkable record, and has achieved many notable triumphs. These have hardly received the attention to which their importance entitles them. It is true that no canal has been carried, like the Callao, Lima, and Oroya railroad, in Peru, to the height of nearly sixteen thousand feet above the level of the sea.[24] It has, however, on the Languedoc and other canals been found easily feasible to carry a canal to a height of 600 to 1000 ft. above the sea. Canal engineers have not, perhaps, pierced the Alps with a tunnel ten miles in length, as on the Saint-Gothard Railway; but they have carried a tide-water canal from the Mediterranean to the Red Sea, and they have essayed to perform the same feat through the Cordillera. Hydraulic engineering has, next to railway engineering, been the most remarkable manifestation of the applied science of modern times, and in canal construction it has attained some of its most successful results.