Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 38, Number 19, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 October 1905 — NEW WATERWAYS. [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

NEW WATERWAYS.

Some Proposed Shortenings of Northwestern Transportation Routes. The canal, ancient institution though it is, so far from having outlived its uses, commends with increasing urgency as the ydars speed by. Canals do not hold their place in the public eye directly as means of cheap transport, but as short cuts between great navigable waters. A short cut is a time-saver, and a time-saver is a money-maker. And this is the universal demand.

From the days of the Pharoahs a waten-link between the Mediterranean and the Red Sea was talked of and a generation or so ago the Suez Canal became a fact So well established is it now that commerce between Europe and the Orient marvels how it got along before De Lesscps made a dream come true. Then on our continent was the Erie Canal that brought the Great Lakes in touch with the Atlantic through the Hudson River. There was the Manchester Canal, the Kiel Canal and the Soo Canal. The Panama Canal Is in near prospect, a ship canal between the inland seas and the Mississippi River is in mind, and now comes a proposition to join Lakes Superior and Michigan 135 miles west of Sault Ste. Marie. It is contemplated to utilize White Fish River, which flows from very near the north shore of the northern peninsula of Michigan southward into the Little Bay de Noquette, due north of Chicago. Of the forty miles across the peninsula only about sixteen would need to be dredged. The time is perhaps not distant when engineers will cut a canal

through the base of the Michigan peninsula and thus couple up Lake Huron and Lake Michigan. A ditch 155 miles would reduce by 450 miles the allwater route between Buffalo and Chicago. The route across the Michigan peninsula which has been suggested lies from Toledo on the east to South Haven on the west. The topography of the land presents none of the great obstacles which were overcome In the Erie, Chesapeake and Ohio and other great American canals. The com merce of the Great Lakes Is vast enough to deserve all the short cuts which engineering skill and wealth can command.

POSSIBLE CANALS.