ways is limited by the greater severity of the winter.
In laying out artificial waterways these characteristics
have to be reckoned with. It is precisely, however, in
extensive inland districts where distances are very great
that the cheapness of water carriage for heavy goods is
most fully felt. Owing to this cheapness alone it be-
comes possible for Upper Silesia to smelt Swedish ores,

Fig. 38. —The Waterways of Central Europe.

and for Mannheim to distribute Roumanian corn over
South Germany. The farthest internal ports of Central
Europe, to each of which more than 50,000 tons of
goods are annually brought up by natural waterways, are
Strassburg, Heilbronn, Frankfort, Dortmund, Hameln,
Prague, Berlin, Kosel, Thorn; Elbing, Königsberg, Tilsit,
and in the Danube basin Ratisbon.

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