A Treatise on Rivers and Canals, Vol. 1

Book excerpt: Excerpt from A Treatise on Rivers and Canals, Vol. 1: Relating to the Control and Improvement of Rivers and the Design, Construction, and Development of Canals; d104 In preparing a course of lectures on 'River and Canal Engineering, ' which I was requested to deliver at the School of Military Engineering at Chatham in 1880, it appeared to me that a book might be useful which should present, in a simple and concise form, descriptions of the principal and most recent works on rivers and canals, at home and abroad, and the principles on which they are based. Within the last ten years much has been accomplished in the somewhat neglected domain of inland navigation improvement. Thus the Amsterdam Ship Canal has been completed and opened; the Panama Canal has been projected and commenced; a new outlet has been provided for the River Maas, and the navigable condition of the Delta of the Mississippi has been entirely transformed. Considerable progress has been made in the same period in the improvement works on the rivers Clyde, Tyne, and Tees. Other works also of less recent date have become sufficiently established to admit of some estimate being formed with reference to their prospects of maintenance; such as the Suez Canal, and the embankment of the estuary of the River Seine. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.