Omaha Daily Bee Newspaper, February 8, 1903, Page 30

Canal Service ON THE 5, bv Frank G OTTERDAM, Jan. Correspondence of Carpenter.) (Special The Bee,) This is the age of railroads. It promises also to be the age of Water transportation is still cheaper than any other, and the Eu- ropean nations are deepening their rivers and constructing canals to join their water- ways. It is only a question of time the United States will do the and when we shall ship Joining some of the principal parts of our country I came from Antwerp to Rotterdam by boat to learn something about the canals of the Dutch, and since then I have visited their waterways in the north. Holland is the canal land of the world. It has more interior waterways than any region except the Yangtse Kiang valley about Shanghai, Hangchow and Soochow. It {s, all told, only about as big as Massachusetts, but if you could stretch its navigable waterways out In one straight line they would carry you from New York to San KFrancisco and almost back to Chicago before you got to the end of them. There are in all about two thousand miles of canals—enough to reach from New York to Denver—and also three thousand miles of other waterways, including little rivers and the mouths of the Scheldt and Rhine, and also the Zuy- der Zee and other places where the north ern ocean runs into the land. Indeed, there is 8o much water here thal one of the most Important duties of the government i{s the taking care of it. The government has a department known as ‘The Waterstaat, and the queen has in her canals when same, have canals cabinet a minister of waterways This department has some of the best of eivil engineers. It has men who devote them- selves to studying how to keep the North sea from rushing in and drowning out the country, for almost one-half of Holland is below the ocean, so that in some places the fishes outside swim high above the level of the thatched house roofs. It has men who are engaged In planning and building thip canals, such as the mighty waterways which connect Amsterdam with the ocean, and it has others who are schem- ing how to bulld a great dyke across the Zuyder Zee to redeem as much land as a good-sized Texas county, which, when re- deemed, will be worth hundreds of dollars an acre. This undertaking is for a time in abey- ance, but thera is no doubt that it will eventually be carried out. The Dutch have done much of such reclamation in the past. About fifty years ago they lifted 1,000,000, 000 tons of water cut of the region near Haarlem, and made seventy square miles of good farming land. It cost them more than $1,600,000, but the land was worth ft In another place they have redeemed 41,000 acros at a cost of about $4,000,000, and as soon as the work was dene a foreign syndi- cate offered them.$2,000,000 for the prop- erty as a whole. The government refused this offer, and eventually got several hun- dred thousand dollars more than It cost it to make the improvement As to the Zuyder Zee scheme, this Is a bigger one than any that has yet been un- dertaken. It is estimated that it will cost over $75,000,000, but it will result in the reclamation of a vast tra:t of land. The work will take thirty-three years, and the taxes on the lund recovered will then bring in $4,000,000 a year to the government, making the matter a good long-time Invest- ment. At present the government {s afraid of it, and although all the plans have been completed no work has been actually done. Have you ever heard of Zeeland? It is the southeastern province of Holland, con- sisting of nine islands lying in the mouths of the Scheldt and the Maas, formed by the silt brought down by these rivers. The most of the province is below sea level, being protected against the ocean by mighty dykes. It was through this province that I came from Antwerp to Rotterdam on the little steamboat Telegraf III As I rode down the Scheldt I passed the and Administrationlin Europe ZUID BEVELAND CANAL ) EVELY BARGE HAS ITS CANAL IN AMSTERDAM, WITH LOAD OF AMERICAN FLOUR. Kroonland of our own American line mov- ing up with a cargo from New York for Antwerp, and a little later on came in sight of the dykes. Near the Dutch boundary the river is walled with stone held between piles. We rode high above the rest of the country, and could see the roofs of the pvarns and houses even with the top of the dykes. On the opposite side the trees showed out like bushes over the wall which extended on and on up the river as far as our eyes could »each. We passed the great forts that guard this entrance to Europe, and went on througn a flax country on the edge of the sea. At times we could see the flelds beyond the walls with the cattle feed- ing upon them. Long lines of trees marked out the road, which seemed to be march- ing over the landscape, making me think of Macbeth's woods coming to Dunsinane. We soon left the Scheldt and passing through the locks came into the canal of South Beveland. This is one of the largest canals of southern Holland. It is wide and high banked, and sc straight that the tugs and barges which fill it grow smaller and smaller and finally block the canal in the distance. The locks are old fashionel. They are moved by hand by quaint old Dutchmen in caps, roundabouts and fat pantaloons. Al every lock Dutch girls brought out fruit and knicknacks to sell to the passengers They were pretty girls and 1 liked their quaint costumes. They wore short skirts, white clogs and black stockings. Several had on bright and two had horns of gold over each of their eye the horns twisted around in the shape of a miniature old-fashioned bed spring. Three others had gold o= silver helmets fitted tight to their showing out through their lace caps dealt with them, but best of the bargain Vests heads They invariably got the Most of the laughed as we craft of this canal is carried along by tugs, although barges are pulled by men and others by horses. So far but tricity has although this considered by the At every few steps along the way some women and little elec been applied to these canals, matter is Dutch are posts for tying the boats, and we now and then passed boats at anchor. Leaving the South Beveland canal, we entered the Ooster Scheldt, a sort of branch of the sea, and then went on between the seriously islands of Duiveland and Tholen into the as canal. The waters of the Ooster Scheldt are wide and spotted with islands. We passed many sailing craft and now and then went by a tug towing great barges With the glass we could see schools of black seals on the sand flats, and farther back hundreds of Holstein cattle lying out in the sun We entered the Hollandische Diep and then the canals and mouths of the Maas, now going by villages on the banks, and now seeing the second stories of other vil- lage houses which were apparently looking over the dvkes and watching us go by. The Dutch canals are almost as thickly populated as the waterways of China. Every barge we passed had its family upon it, an evidence of the thousands of Dutch families which live and die upon boats. Babies are born upon them, and many have no other homes. We frequently saw chil- dren trotting up and down the roofs of the barges within six inches of drowning, and now and then a little one tied with a rope to the mast. On many of the boats the women were cooking; on some they were hanging out the washing, and on one a little Dutch girl held up her doll baby and laughed as we went by. Every village along the canal had its own tied to the banks, and the larger towns were cut up by canals so that boats from the main canals could be taken into them by means of locks. We stopped for a time at Dordrecht, which in the middle ages was one of the richest of all the Dutch citles. It had palaces at that time, and its buildings now are medieval and quaint to an extreme Just below the city there is a lumber yard at which barges of American lumber were unloading. 1 noted the name of the firm. It was Dubbledam, an evidence that the lum- ber men of Holland can compete in pro fanity with our men at home In many places along these canals there were dredges at work, and here and there we saw the officers of the Waterstaat su- perintending the building of new embank- ments. The canals are almost everywhere walled with stones the size of your two fists and as I looked at them the enormous work that it must have taken to make 2,000 miles of such canals came to me. There are no stones ‘n Holland. Every pebble has to he brought in from other ccuntries, and every boats one of those stones was laid by wand. Each one took a part of a man's life to put it in its place, so that in reality the lives of generations have been swallowed up by these canal banks. You have all heard of the windmills of Holland? They are to be seen everywhere. Along some of the canals there are hun- dreds of them. They spot the farms, and you see them on the edge of the towns, where they grind flour, saw lumber and do all sorts of things. They give a great charm. to the landscape. They look so0 alive that I don't wonder that Don Quixote took one for a glant ahd wanted to fight him. These mills are all old, and it must have cost many millions of dollars to build them. Their day, however, is past, and but few new ones are building. The gas engine and the steam engine have taken their places, and we may yet have a Hol- land without windmills. Holland has made its ship canals pay well. Amsterdam has the North Sea canal, which is about fifteen miles long, running across the country from Amsterdam to the ocean. It is thirty feet deep and has two sncrmous locks which protect it from the North sea at high tide. I took a ride along it a week ago and inspected the breakwa- ter at its entrance. The work is well done but the locks do not compare with those of the Sault Ste, Marie between Lake “iperior and Lake Huron. The caual ¢ about $16,000,000, of which one-fourth was paid by the sale of the reclaimed land, which brought an average price of almost $500 an acre. ’ The town of Rotterdam is a city of canals and canalized rivers. The Maas has been s0 dredged that it now permits the largest of ocean ships to come into Rotterdam, and the connections with the Rhine and other parts of Europe are such that this city has become one of the chief ports on the con- tinent. It is one of our principal gateways for northern Europe, surpassing Antwerp in its importations of American products. Antwerp, as far as the figures go, has the greater tonnage, but much of its tonnage is made up of ships which merely touch there, while that of Rotterdam is composed of ships which take on and discharge cargo Rotterdam has about half as much ship- ping as Hamburg and about one-third that of Liverpool or Lend . The \ shipping is (« tinued FAMILY. steadily increasing, and it now comprises lines to all parts of the world. In 1900 there werc about 600 ships from the United States. This is not one-tenth of the whole number that they carried almost onec-third of the cargo of that year. The chief of these ships are those of the Holland-American line, which go from Rot- came he ‘e, but terdam direct to New York, and have be n dning so since 1900. These ships are firs class passenger steamers, some of them being 12,000 tons and over Rotterdam is our gute ro the and to the enormous country tribu it Our goods are here transshippe into th huge barges, from 200 to 300 feet long, in which they are carried up the Rhine The river freights are exceedingly low and the Rhine trade is enormous. About one-half of all the goods that come into Holland through Rotterdam up the Rhine to differ ent parts of Germnany, Switzerland and France, the number of river ships and which carry them being something like 110,000 annually. There are canals con necting the Rhine with the Seine and the Elbe. The barges go as far north as Basel and some of them are taken up the Main to the Danube, so that Rotterdam is ac- tually the center point of a network of waterways which embraces almost ali cen- trai Europe. The increase of the Rhine trade has given Rotterdam great prosperity. It had about 200,000 people in 1800. 1t now has almost 350,000 and it is growing like a green bay boats tree. It is steadily increasing its ship- ping facilities. It has built a new harbor, which is over a mile long and 1,000 feet wide, and has another harbor in course of construction which will be 2,000 feet long, 1,000 feet wide and twenty-six feet deep When the pre improvements are com dam pleted Rotte will have twenty-five miles of quays. It has already over twenty mtiles and more than thirty-two acres ot sheds and warchouses for its ocean ship ping. This all belongs to the municipal- ity. The city has put up cighty steel cranes which will 1ift from 1,500 to 66,000 pounds each, and it has hydraulic coal lifts which will move 200 tons of coal per hour at a cost of 4 cents per ton. In every respect the shipping facilities are of the best. I am surprised at the work the Europeans are doing in making canals. I have been pretty well over the continent within the past few years. Nearly every couniry is improving its waterways. Russia is plan ning a canal from St. Petersburg and th Baltic to the Black sea, which will b thirty feet deep and able to accommodat the largest of the ocean steamers The canal system will probably be extendea eventually to the Northern ocean, so that the whkole ccuntry will be ac ble by water. The chief rivers of Rus ready connected by sible to go from St wre al canals, and it is pos- Petersburg to the Cas pian sea by boat \‘ Germany has for years heen spending ¢ enormous amourt on deepcr i riv and building canals, and it has o best canal systems of Eurcp Geods ea be taken from Hamburg to Berlin and al most to the sources of the by boa There are canals connecting the Elbe & the Oder, and the canal which has been built to join the coal and iron re I bout Dortmund to the North sea will eventually be extended to embrace the Khine, the Wesser and the Elbe. The Germans want to standardize the'r canal system, if possible that bar carrying 1,000 tons can be taken to part of the country. They use wid: birg s on the principle th t wide canal than a decp one At present the canals ¢ rn Ger seem to be favored over those of the w the port of Stettin complaining that th Prussian government will not give it th canal facilities which it needs to competc with Hamburg It is much aearer naturally more accessible to Berlin th on Seventh I ge) —