Page:EB1911 - Volume 09.djvu/951

RAILWAYS] times not only in the Baltic but also on the eastern shores of the North Sea north of the Rhine mouths, made regular use of at least three such passes. One of these was the Brenner, the summit of which is under 4500 ft. in height, approached on the south side by the valley of the Adige and its tributary the Eisak, on the other side by the Inn valley and that of its small tributary the Sill. By this route the Alps at about their widest are crossed with exceptional ease; and hence it was natural that it should have been used by the Etruscans to reach the amber shores of the Baltic, and in all subsequent periods in intercourse between central Europe and northern Italy. In their trade with the mouth of the Rhine the Etruscans appear to have used only the passes approached by the Dora Baltea, which leads equally to the Little St Bernard, to the south of Mont Blanc, and so to the Isère valley and the Rhone, and to the Great St Bernard, to the east of Mont Blanc, and so directly to the Rhone valley above the Lake of Geneva, by which route the remainder of the Alps could be rounded on the west and the Rhine valley reached by crossing the northern Jura. Roman roads were afterwards made across all these passes, although that across the Great St Bernard (the highest of all, above 8100 ft.) seems never to have been made practicable for carriages. The Romans also made use of three intervening passes by which in a single rise from the Po basin the heads of valleys leading right down to the head of Lake Constance could be reached. These were the Bernardino, Splügen and Septimer, to mention them in the order from west to east. By the Romans the Simplon was also made use of as affording the most direct connexion between Milan and the upper Rhone valley. All these passes were likewise in use in the middle ages when Venice and Genoa were the great intermediaries in the trade in pepper and spices and other Oriental products. The Brenner afforded the most direct connexion between Venice and southern Germany, on a route leading also to northern Germany by way of Ratisbon and afterwards the rivers of the Elbe basin, and finally (from the end of the 14th century) by a canal to Lübeck, which was the great distributing centre of these and other products for the Baltic. To take the most direct route to the Rhine valley and north-western Europe some other pass (the Seefeld or the Fern) in the Bavarian Alps had to be crossed and the Rhine valley reached by Augsburg, and thence either by way of Ulm or Frankfort. From Genoa the routes in the early middle ages were by way of Milan to the Lake of Constance, and thence by way of Ulm if the Rhine valley was the goal, and by way of Augsburg if it was the Baltic. The St Gotthard route, the most direct connexion between Milan and the north of the Alps, was added about the end of the 13th century. The Mont Cenis pass from an early date afforded the most direct connexion between Genoa and the middle Rhone valley by way of Turin. When modern carriage roads came to be built it was still the same routes that were chosen. The road across the Brenner, completed in 1772, was the first of these. The building of the great Swiss carriage roads across the passes in the early part of the 19th century was inaugurated by Napoleon’s road across the Simplon completed in 1805. A later paragraph will show that modern railways follow much the same, if not exactly the same, routes. On the early use of the Saône-Rhone valleys, and the route between the foot-hills of the Cevennes and the Pyrenees, it is not necessary to insist, but it may be mentioned that English tin was sometimes conveyed to the Mediterranean (Marseilles) by this latter route in Roman times.

Since the introduction of railways inland waterways have in most countries taken a very inferior position as means of transport. The articles on the different countries supply the necessary information with respect to those which have a purely national interest,

but here mention must be made of those which have significance as belonging to trans-European routes or have an international value. The importance of shortening the water-route between the opposite sides of the great European isthmus separating the Baltic and the Black Sea is brought into prominence by the constant revival of projects for a ship-canal connecting those coasts. A definite step taken with a view to carrying out such a project was the sanction given by the tsar in April 1905 for the appointment of a special commission to inquire into the practicability of a scheme for the excavation of a canal about 28 ft. deep between Riga and Kherson, utilizing the waters of the Duna or western Dvina, the Berezina and Dnieper. Since the completion in 1845 of the Ludwigs or Danube-Main Canal, running from the Main near Bamberg to Kelheim on the Danube, it has been possible to go by water from the mouth of the Rhine to the mouth of the Danube; but this canal has in reality no trans-European significance. It cannot take barges of a greater capacity than 125 tons, is not adapted for steamers, and carries only a very small amount of traffic. But projects for connecting the Danube with northern Europe by water are still entertained. Of these the most advanced are those for establishing connexions through Austria. On the 11th of June 1901 the Austrian diet passed an act prescribing the construction of a canal connecting the Oder with the Danube through the Morava, and another connecting the Danube at Linz with the Moldau-Elbe, and the improvement of the navigation on the connected waterways. The Oder-Danube canal thus authorized would have to cross a watershed of little more than 1000 ft. in altitude as against 1365 ft. in the case of the Ludwigs Canal; but the Elbe-Danube Canal would have to cross one of about 2250 ft. Under the provisions of the act the work is to be completed by 1924. In Germany projects have been actively agitated for improving the Danube-Main connexion either wholly or partly along the route of the present canal, and for establishing a new connexion by means of a canal of at least 6½ ft. in depth by way of the Neckar, the Rems and the Brenz, joining the Danube at Lauingen about midway between Ulm and Donauwörth. The Moldau-Elbe is itself an important international waterway, inasmuch as it allows of steamer traffic from Prague in Bohemia to Hamburg, and by means of a connecting canal to Lübeck. But the most important of all international waterways in Europe is the Rhine, on which even sea-going steamers regularly ascend to Cologne, and an amount of traffic crosses the Dutch frontier three or four times as great as that which makes use of the Manchester ship-canal. The river is also navigable to Basel in Switzerland, though above Strassburg the river is little used, being replaced since 1834 by the Rhine and Rhone canal, which connects the two rivers through the Ill and the Saône. The Rhine is also connected with the Seine by the Marne and Rhine canal passing north of the Vosges, and its tributary the Moselle is also navigable from France into Germany. The Meuse again is navigable from France through Belgium into Holland, and is connected by more than one route with the Seine, and in the densely peopled mining and manufacturing country in the north of France and the adjoining parts of Belgium numerous waterways ramify in different directions. Even in an article on Europe the entirely French canals connecting the Seine and Rhone (Burgundy canal, summit-level 1230 ft., completed 1832), the Loire and Rhone (Canal du Centre, summit-level 990 ft., completed in 1793), and the Canal du Midi, connecting the Garonne at Toulouse with Cette on the Mediterranean, may be mentioned inasmuch as they establish communication between different seas. The last is of special interest because it is the oldest (completed in 1681), because it makes use of the lowest crossing, surmounting the passage of Naurouse, or Gap of Carcassonne, at an altitude of 625 ft., and because it effects the greatest shortening of distance from sea to sea. On this account the project of establishing a ship-canal of modern dimensions along this route has been as often revived as that of the Black Sea and Baltic canal. In the east of Europe the Vistula and Memel are both international waterways, but they are of little importance compared with those in the west. The Kaiser Wilhelm or North Sea and Baltic canal, opened in 1895, has, however, no little international value, inasmuch as it shortens the sea-route to the Baltic for all North Sea ports to the south of Newcastle, and affords the means of avoiding a rather dangerous passage round the north of Jutland. A minor degree of international interest belongs to the ship-canal through the Isthmus of Corinth, opened on the 6th of August 1893.

The following table gives a summary statement of the progress

of railway construction in European countries down to the end of the 19th century:—