INLAND NAVIGATION.

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the second great cataract. Through a kind of promontory, which projectsInto the stream, the solid rock of granite was hollowed eight hundred andsixty feet in length, fifty-six feet six inches in depth, and eighteen feetin breadth. This sluice was called Polhem’s sluice, and was to consistof three locks, by which vessels were to be let down a fall of fifty-sixfeet six inches. At the distance of two thousand nine hundred andtwenty feet, a third cut was made to the Flatesoerg fall, terminating inthe sluice of Elvius, the last of this projected plan. The length of thecut is twenty-eight feet, the breadth eighteen, and the depth or heightof the fall thirty-four feet three inches. In order to form some idea inwhat manner the navigation was to be continued from the sluice ofPolhem to that of Elvius, it will be necessary to give a descriptive view oftsie intervening space.

A little below the sluice of Polhem, the river dashes through a nar-row passage, called Stampstrœm ; from thence it gradually widens into akind of bay, named Hoyon’s warp: it is again cramped into a narrowchannel by the nearer approach of rocks on each side, and forms a ca-taract, called Helvert’s fall; at the extremity of which it expands it-self into a small bason, called Ali-Halla; and then again precipitatesitself at the Flatesoerg fall, from whence it becomes navigable. Insteadof continuing any works through the cataracts, or by the side of theriver, the communication between the sluices of Polhem and Elvius wasattempted in the following manner: A dyke of stone was constructedacross the river, just below the Flatesoerg fall and the sluice of Elvius,and forming a level with the bottom of Polhem. This chimerical pro-ject, which seems rather too ridiculous to have been seriously enter-tained, was however attempted. The king himself visited the work,and all Sweden was in eager expectation that the favourite project ofthe nation would at length be completed. The dyke was built; theriver had risen twelve feet of the thirty-four; when, in an instant, theweight of waters burst the barrier too feeble to restrain them, and sweptaway in an instant the labours and expence of several years.- The im-

G mensity