Modern engineers think they have carried the art of surveying
to very great perfection, but a good deal of it must have been known in ancient times. No road is so imperishable as a Roman road, which indicates that the engineers not only built well, but chose good routes, especially in their exemption from the action of floods. The Indian engineers seldom find that they can improve on the routes selected for ancient native canals, or the sites chosen for huge tanks, and this week Colonel Tiirr quoted a still more striking instance. He has been sur- veying for the canal to be cut through the Isthmus of Corinth, and, after a most careful examination of three alternative
routes, has decided that the one selected by the Emperor Nero's engineers is by far the best. Not to mention that it is shorter than all others, the "trace of Nero" terminates at each end in calm and deep water ; and "another advantage of the Nero trace consists in the disposition of the slopes, which favours it, inasmuch as the canal would be then protected against the floods in the ravines along the slopes, while the two other lines would catch these waters." That shows scientific surveying; and it is to be noted that Nero's engineers, like Alexander's, had freed themselves from the singular superstition which so greatly influenced modern opinion, that the waters of two seas were never of the same height. This argument was actually thrown at M. de Lesseps as a serious one, not only against the Suez Canal, but the Canal of Corinth.
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