BALTIC AND BLACK SEA SHIP CANAL.
A company has just been organised in Russia, under direct imperial authority, to construct the long-talked-of Baltic and Black Sea Ship canal, and it is declared that the necessary capital, $200,000,000, will be raised without difficulty by Dutch, French and American capitalists. Mr. Rukteschel is the engineer. His plans are founded upon the utilisation of the rivers Dnieper and Western Dvina. These streams, starting in the Valdai hills, run nearly parallel, in a southwesterly direction, and make a sharp turn to the northwest and the southeast, respectively. The points where they make this bend are about sixty miles apart. Mr. Rukteschel proposes to cut the connecting canal between these two points. The daring feature of his scheme is the provision that the entire canal, extending from sea to sea, shall not have a single lock to delay navigation. The connecting arm between the two rivers is to be fed by a canal extending 200 miles to the great Pinsk swamps, and tapping many streams which take their rise in them. The Pinsk swamps occupy a space half as large as all France, and are fed by multitudes of springs. Lake Jid, which appears to be the collecting basin, is seventy feet higher than the bed of the proposed connecting link. The estimated length of the canal is 1,460 miles, of which 330 will follow’ the Dvina, and 1,065 the Dneiper. The proposed depth is thirty-one feet, six inches, the width at the bottom 140 feet, and at the top 265 feet. The estimated amount of excavation of earth is something less than three thousand million cubic yards, which, it is estimated, can be executed with American steam shovels at a cost of $112,500,000. About 13,000,000 cubic yards of rock must be blasted at an estimated cost of $10,000,000.
Clare, Mich., will put down four six-inch loo-foot wells for water supply.
