ENGINEERING.

the commerce of Egypt, Persia, and the coast of Africa. China, in her institutions hostile to art, has nevertheless encouraged the making of canals; and their convenience having aided in supplying a ready transit of her commodities she has, more perhaps from cunning than a wish to develope the powers of the human mind, intersected her country with them. The canal which runs from Canton to Pekin is in length upwards of 800 miles, and was executed about 700 years since it has no locks, tunnels, or aqueducts, and when stopped by mountains or other impediments, they have recourse

ENGINEER civil, in contradistinction to the same || of 100 cubits, reckoning 22 inches to each cubit; and profession attendant on military works, is a person of in its depth sufficient to allow of the navigation of the considerable importance in society: his employ embra-largest vessels. By this canal India was enriched with ces pre-eminently canals and their attendants, reservoirs, locks, basons, aqueducts, tunnels, bridges, docks and buildings in water, erecting beacons and light-houses, the cutting and forming roads, making iron rail roads, &c. &c. To make the expert engineer requires considerable talent in the individual, joined to great personal firmness, with a cautious enterprise. He should be a He should be a || mathematician of the first order, with a ready aptitude of extending its powers to practical purposes, experienced in local nature, with science and command competent to assist and improve her, so as to effect all the multiplied wants of a great commanding and pow-to a rolling bridge, and sometimes to inclined planes. erful people.-The cutting of canals is the first in order, These rolling bridges consist of a number of cylindrical and is of a very early date; for we find the Cnidians, a rollers which turn easily on pivots, and are sometimes people of Asia Minor, projecting an undertaking of put in motion by a windmill, so that the same mathis nature they wished the isthmus, which joined chinery serves a double purpose, that of working the mill their territory, to connect itself with the continent. The and drawing up vessels. In this manner they draw their oracle was consulted, and it was interdicted. (Herodotus, vessels from the canal on one side of a mountain to the l.i. c. 174.). Basons and canals were formed in Boeotia, other. In Europe, the nurse of science and the arts, says Strabo, supplied by the lake Copais. The great to which in a great measure must be referred the sucriver Euphrates was connected with the Tigris by means cessful completion of all great works, artificial rivers of a canal. A branch was also formed by Trajan near has presented an everlasting monument. In the year Coche, to join the same river. The Greeks, as well 1666, Louis the Fourteenth gave directions for conas the Romans, formed the design of making a canal structing a plan to connect the ocean with the Mediacross the Isthmus of Corinth, which joins Achaia, for terranean by the canal of Languedoc. This was a bold the purpose of obtaining a passage by the Ionian sea. undertaking if it be considered that all the details conA similar plan was projected between the Euxine and nected with it were to be created, every thing was new; Caspian seas. The Roman generals were fully im- Francis Riquet was the engineer, and he lived to compressed with the utility of canals, of which they execut-plete it. This canal is upwards of 64 leagues in length, ed many, as the ruins now existing demonstrate. They and is furnished with 104 locks. It runs through rocks connected the Rhine with the Iosel, and also the former in some places of 1,000 paces in extent, in others it river with the Moselle. Savary says, the canals in passes valleys and bridges by means of aqueducts of Egypt amounted in number to eighty, but they were vast height. It joins the river Garonne near Thoulouse more for the purpose of irrigation than communication. and terminates in the lake Tau, which extends it to The Nile was joined to the Red Sea by an artificial the Port of Cette. It was began by forming a large channel; the work was commenced by Necos, who reservoir 4,000 paces in circumference and 24 deep, was followed by Sesostris and Darius; the latter relin- which was supplied by water issuing from the mountain quished the undertaking on the information reaching Noire. In Germany and the Low Countries, canals him that the Red Sea being so much above the level form the principal means of communication between of the land in Egypt, it would be difficult if not impos- one place and another. The canal of Bruges runs to sible to prevent the overflowing of the banks, and con- the sea at Ostend, and is extended to Ghent, Brussels, sequent inundation of the country. The alarm was just; Antwerp, and many other places: it is in depth suffibut the engineer would have been but little acquainted cient to allow of merchantmen coming to the warehouse with his subject not to have shewn the practicability of of its owner. These canals pass into the very streets of avoiding such a calamity. Under Ptolomy the Second the above-named towns; indeed, in all Flanders and the undertaking was completed. Its width was upwards Holland, in towns of any importance, the streets are intersected

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