It should be unnecessary, however, to discuss amendments until the present law has been given an intelligent and thorough trial. So far it has never been given that trial. The complaints of the Commission that the present act has not been, and will not be, enforced are confessions of its own failure to perform its duty, rather than proof of defects in the law. If the present Commissioners will not enforce it, they should resign, and give the President a chance to appoint men who can and will enforce it. It is believed that such enforcement will prove its adequacy. If not, amendment can then proceed upon facts and actual experience, instead of upon misconceptions and unproved theories.

WALKER D. HINES.

SOME REMARKABLE RUSSIAN ENGINEERING PROJECTS.

THE Russian people have long been in the habit of adding to the titles of their emperors somewhat magniloquent epithets to commemorate the particular distinction which each has earned during his life. Thus, Alexander II is remembered as "The Tsar-Liberator," and his successor, the third Alexander, as "The Tsar-Peace-keeper." It is probable that the latter title, had it not been already monopolized, might have been claimed with more justice by the present emperor; but, as it is, Nicholas II will have to be content with a less poetical title. It is quite possible, indeed, that he will be known in history as the "Tsar-Engineer"; for his reign has not only witnessed the completion of the longest and in its probable historic effects the most important - railway in the world, but promises also to see the carrying-out of a number of engineering projects of quite unprecedented magnitude. Compared with many of the schemes which are now being urged upon the Russian departments of finance and communications, even the Siberian railway shrinks into insignificance; and whether these schemes are destined to be carried out in the immediate future, or, as is more probable, only after the lapse of many years, most of them are well worthy of description.

All these projects, as might be expected from Russia's peculiar position, are concerned primarily with water, and not with land. It is a commonplace to say that, ever since the time of Peter the Great, Russia's dominant interest has been to extend in every direction toward the open sea. That ambition has now been accomplished on every side except one; for, short of a great political convulsion, the Persian Gulf is the only remaining sea in which Russia is likely to obtain an influence. Yet, in spite of the very considerable success with which Russia, originally an inland state, has acquired extensive seaboards on the Baltic, the Black Sea, the Caspian, and the Northern Pacific, it cannot be said that she has anywhere, except perhaps in the last-named direction, attained the complete freedom which is essential to her development as a maritime power. The keys of her two main outlets into Europe, the Baltic and the Black Sea, are held by foreign and traditionally hostile powers, while

her extreme northern ports have disadvantages which no political changes can remove. For the carrying on of the maritime commerce which she regards as indispensable to her economic development, Russia is even now very unfavorably situated, while her position as a naval power in time of war is even worse. The union of her Baltic and Black Sea fleets would require a circuitous voyage and the passage of three narrow straits, one of which is prohibited to warships by international treaty, and at each of which it would be impossible to avoid battle with a superior enemy. If the art of the engineer could do anything to remove deficiencies so great, it might be regarded as a certainty that the Russians, who seem to have a natural taste for vast projects, would be the first to call him in.

The project for making a canal across European Russia from the Baltic to the Black Sea is, indeed, not a new one. It has been a subject of discussion for so long that its practicability might be doubted, were it not that we know that the Siberian railway was discussed as far back as the sixties and only begun in 1891. The great canal project has a similar history, having interested Alexander III more than twelve years ago. It was admitted even then that the only obstacle to the construction of the canal was that, as in the case of all schemes which offer no prospect of immediate profit, capital could not be obtained from private sources. Since that time the state finances have been so heavily burdened by continued outlay upon the Siberian railway that no money has been available for any project not of immediate importance.

Nevertheless the configuration of Russia and the flow of its rivers eminently favor the plan of connecting the two seas. The project, to sum it up in a sentence, is to join the northward-flowing Düna, which falls into the Gulf of Riga a little below the city of that name, with the Dnieper, the second of the rivers of Russia in Europe, by cutting a shipcanal between the two rivers, or, more strictly speaking, by cutting a ship-canal between the Düna and the Beresina, which flows into the Dnieper about 150 miles north of Kieff. The headwaters of these two rivers are only separated by a narrow and low watershed, which is even now intersected by a short canal, navigable by small vessels and barges. In a sense, therefore, a canal from the Black Sea to the Baltic already exists, cutting Russia completely in two; and it is possible even now to travel in a barge from Riga to Kherson. But the project at present being discussed has little in common with this. To join the two seas by a ship-canal having a minimum depth of twenty-eight feet would require the cutting and deepening of existing channels for 1,607 versts, or about a thousand

miles. Such is the project at present under discussion, and its execution, it is estimated, would require an expenditure of $150,000,000—a sum exactly equal to the original estimate for the Siberian railway, and equal also to the further sum which it is now estimated will be required before that railway is put into a thoroughly efficient condition.

By far the greater part of this sum would, however, be devoted not to cutting the canal proper, but to deepening the existing river-beds. The Dnieper, for instance, while second only to the Volga in magnitude among the rivers of European Russia, is not, strictly speaking, navigable at all, though small steamers reach as far as Dorogobuzh, within a short distance of its source. Its navigation is everywhere impeded by sands and shallows, while for a distance of fifty-three miles to the south of Ekaterinoslav stretch the famous rapids, which, in spite of much labor, still remain a great obstacle to free navigation. The Dnieper, however, is one of the most important of all Russia's water communications; and the amazing multiplicity of the towns and villages upon its banks is the best tribute to its value as an artery of commerce. On the other hand, the Düna is both broad and navigable; and even now it carries to the Baltic about 30,000,000 tons of merchandise every year, with the result that Riga is the fourth port in importance in the Russian Empire.

The commercial importance of the canal lies in the fact that it would pass through the most prosperous agricultural region of Russia. The necessity for better communications may be gauged from this that, owing to the high tariffs on the Russian railways, it is at present cheaper to ship wheat from Odessa to St. Petersburg by sea than to send the grain grown in the central provinces to the same city by rail. The connection of great centres like Kherson, Ekaterinoslav, and Kieff with the centres of export in the north would, however, be only part of the advantages gained. The navigable or semi-navigable tributaries of the Dnieper extend for several hundred miles to the east and west. The Pripiat, to give one instance, is already connected by means of a canal with the Vistula; and the connection of the Dnieper with the Düna would result in the great manufacturing centres of Poland finding an outlet on every side. But even the commercial advantages of the canal would be small when compared with its influence upon the naval position of Russia by enabling her to shift her fleet from north to south in complete security. It is true that this freedom would be restricted to less than two-thirds of the year, owing to the freezing of the rivers. But this disadvantage is common to all the Russian rivers, and it will

certainly not prevent the carrying out of a project which is, after all, only the improvement, on a vast scale, of existing communications.

A project which is of a somewhat similar character, and which, from the commercial point of view, would have equally great advantages, has been put forward with great energy of late. This project is to restore the prehistoric connection between the Black Sea and the Caspian by means of a canal through the Manuich depression, a chain of lakes and small streams which is supposed to represent the channel by which the two seas were formerly united. The advantage of this scheme, which it is estimated would cost $150,000,000, does not lie so much in its forming an outlet for Central Asian merchandise as in the fact that it would bring the vast basin drained by the Volga into direct water communication with Europe. It is probable that no geographical accident ever had a greater effect upon history than the course taken by the Volga, which finally brought the Russians to the Caucasus, to Central Asia, and to the Indian frontier. But the interests of Russian trade would have been much better served if the great river, instead of turning suddenly to the southeast when within fifty miles of the valley of the Don, had united with that river and brought the products of the 600,000 square miles in its basin to the Black Sea instead of to the barren regions on the shores of the Caspian. The project for uniting the two seas by a canal was submitted to the Russian minister of ways of communication as late as last August, and was rejected after examination. But rejection of all such schemes is inevitable until the Baltic project is realized.

A less costly project brought forward at the same time received Prince Hilkoff's endorsement, though its realization has also been postponed. This project was for the cutting of a ship-canal to Rostoff-onthe-Don, thus enabling large vessels with heavy cargoes to load and unload in the town. The estimated cost of such a canal, which would certainly be a great benefit to Russian trade, is $2,000,000. But this scheme is bound up with a much more daring and original project which merits more detailed description.

The essence of this scheme is to take advantage of the peculiarly shut-in condition of the Sea of Azof in order to make it deep enough at all points for sea-going ships. The extreme shallowness of this sea is at the present time the greatest obstacle met with by Russian trade in the south. It is the Sea of Azof, and not the Black Sea, which constitutes the immediate southern outlet of Russian commerce. Neither the Volga nor the Don, the two great navigable rivers which carry the bulk of Russian exports, enters the Black Sea. The Volga loses itself in the