On the Mediterranean seaboard, the Canal du Midi connects with the Canal des Etangs and the Canal de Beaucaire, and thence by the Rhone and Saône, the Canal du Centre, the Canal de Briare, the Canal de Loing, and the Seine to Paris, taking Lyons, Chalons, Dijon, Nivers, and other important towns _en route_. In the south of France, the only important canal is that of the Midi, which connects Bordeaux with Cette; and on the west, the ports of Brest and St. Nazaire are connected with the main line of communication already described—the former by the Canal de Nantes à Brest, and the latter by the Loire river, the Canal Noyers du Berry, and the Canal d’Orleans. It is, however, on the north that the canal system has its greatest development, and especially on the Belgian frontier. The system has been contrived to meet the requirements of all the populous places on the line of route, so that it is very far from having been arranged to save time and distance. This, however, is no disadvantage in cases where density of traffic was the point to be kept in view. Some of the canals have at one end no outlet or through communication. The Canal du Berry, for example, terminates abruptly at Montluçon, the Canal de Roanne à Dijon at Roanne, and the Canal de l’Ourcq at Port-aux-Perches, but this is very exceptional. The system is generally designed to enable one waterway to give immediate access to another, so that through routes are the most characteristic and valuable feature which it presents. The very elaborate statistics which the French people make it their business to collect relative to all their mundane affairs enable us to obtain information as to the character of the traffic on French waterways, and the conditions of its movement, that are not accessible for most other countries. In order that some light may be thrown upon the problem of “how they manage these things in France,” we have been at some pains to get together the most important _data_ bearing on the subject. _Imprimis_, then, it appears that the total tonnage carried on the canals of France in 1887—there are no returns yet issued for a later year—was 21,050,180 tons. As this traffic was carried for a total distance of 1762 millions of miles, it follows that the average distance over which each ton was carried was 84 miles. It is interesting to compare these returns with the corresponding returns for the French railways, which carried 80,360,000 tons for a total distance of 6801 millions of miles, giving an average transport or lead of 84½ miles per ton.