INLAND NAVIGATION.

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diverge a number of canals, that traverse the mountain through its wholebreadth, some of which are thirty stadia (or more than three miles) inlength, and others a much greater extent. To excavate or cleanse them,very deep wells had been funk, at stated distances, on the mountain.

" The traveller, when he views these works, is astonished at the diffi-culty of the enterprise, as well as at the expence it must have cost, andthe time requisite for its completion. But what is still more surprisingis, that these canals and pits, of which neither history nor tradition haspreserved any remembrance, must be attributed to the most remote anti-quity, and that in those distant ages we have no knowledge of any powerin Bœotia capable of forming and executing so vast a project.”

Rome, more attentive to enslave the world by conquest, than to ex-tend her commerce or improve the arts, affords us no examples of canalsfor internal navigation; but her magnificent aqueducts, though notstrictly within the plan of the present work, deserve to be mentioned.These were constructed, at an immense expence, for the conveyance ofwater to that rich and populous city. Some of them were of stone,others of brick, and others of wood; some conveyed the water underground, and others above it, supported by arches of prodigious solidity,beauty, and grandeur; and of the latter some are recorded to have extendeda hundred miles in length. Frontinus, a man of consular dignity, whohad the direction of the aqueducts, under the emperor Nerva, tells us ofnine that emptied themselves through thirteen thousand five hundredand ninety-four pipes of one inch diameter; and Vigenere observes, thatRome received from these aqueducts no less than five hundred thousandhogsheads of water in twenty-four hours.

In the year 1789 the canal which was cut by the emperor Claudiusto drain the Fucine lake into the river Liris, was begun to be cleansed, tothe great relief of the neighbouring country, which was inundated by itsobstruction.

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Egypt*