Inland Waterways A project arguing laudable enterprise has pierced the
obscurity into which the English canal companies seem to have sunk. The energetic and successful Grand Union Canal Company, which owns the longest stretch of private water in the country, has just completed an arrangement whereby goods from the interior of England can be carried all the way by water to the interior of Europe. A new line will connect Antwerp with the Regent's Canal Dock, where our canal system connects with the Port of London. Con- sidering the extensive use of inland water communications on the Continent, particularly the canal systems which link up with the Rhine, it is surprising that all-water com- munication of this kind has not been organised before. As it, is, there is now an opportunity for the merchant of the Midlands to send his goods to, say, Switzerland or Austria by the cheapest of all forms of transport. At the same time decayed inland ports like Peterborough or Norwich are recovering some of the traffic that they lost on the disap- pearance of sail, now that the rapidly developing shallow- draught motor-coasters can bring them water-borne cargoes once more.
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