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 Gulf of Stomalenine (102 B. C.), the Emperor Claudius's canal from the Tiber to the sea, the canal from the Nile to the port of Alexandria, Odoacer's canal from Mentone, near Ravenna, to the sea, the Roman canals in England and Lombardy, the Moorish canals in Granada (which languished when Ferdinand conquered the country!) all indicate the knowledge the ancients had with this form of inland navigation.

The general early theory was to make inland navigation possible by means of a "canalization" of rivers. One of the most successful efforts in this direction is the Grand Canal of China, the great highway of the Middle Kingdom; it was built in the thirteenth century, to connect the waters of the Yang-ste and the Pei-ho Rivers, the former the great waterway of central China, the latter the waterway of the strategic province of Chili. This great work nearly a thousand miles in length is a series of canalized rivers. Other canals, such as that pushed forward by Charlemagne to unite the Rhine with the Danube, were almost impossible until the invention