Europe to be compared with that junction of traffic at
the south-western angle of the North Sea where the-
mouths of the Thames, the Scheldt, the Meuse and the
Rhine converge, near to the entrance of the English
Channel. Subordinate only to this is the south-eastern
angle of the same sea. Here not only ends the largest
river system of the North German lowland, but also
opens the passage to another sea, the Kaiser Wilhelm
Canal, navigable for ships of the largest size, making a
line of connection between Brunsbfittel at the mouth
of the Elbe and the port of Kiel. This canal was com-
pleted in the years between 1887 and 1895, and is the
greatest achievement of modern canal-building. Of its
63 miles of length, only six coincide with the basins of
natural lakes; its depth is 30 feet, its width 72 feet at
the bottom, and 190 feet at the water-level. The doubt
whether the work would ever repay the costs of its con-
struction caused many decades to go by before it was
carried out. Although the new free port of Copenhagen
keeps for the Sound—as was to be expected—by far
the greater part of the traffic, the inlet of Kiel has also
become a busy exit from the Baltic.

For heavy ladings such as go by sea, internal water-
ways still remain very useful. The Netherlands for
this reason possessed a vast advantage in having their
country intersected by a network of rivers, and in being.
easily able to give closer meshes to the net by means of
canals. Even if we disregard smaller ramifications, the.
whole length of navigable waterways in Holland amounts
to 4875 miles. Belgium, with 1375 miles, comes next in
this respect, but its nature made the cutting of artificial
waterways more difficult. These two countries, the com-
bined navigable watercourses Of which happen to amount
to just one-fourth of the circumference of the globe, fall in
this particular but a little below the totality of the German
Empire, which has 8750 miles, and still less below the
great territory of Austro-Hungary with 7220 miles.
Towards the interior of the continent, not only do irre-
gularities of conformation increase, but the value of water-

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