England.

Among the most favoured of our rivals some one river system has
developed a province or a series of provinces; the Rhine has done so,
the Seine and the Garonne. But the great Continental river systems--at
least the navigable ones--stand far apart from one another: in this
small, and especially narrow, country of Britain navigable river
systems are not only numerous, but packed close together. It is
perhaps on this account that we have been under less necessity in the
past to develop our canals; and anyone who has explored the English
rivers in a light boat knows how short are the portages between one
basin and another.

Now not only are we favoured with a multitude of navigable
waterways--the tide makes even our small coastal rivers navigable
right inland--but also we are quite exceptionally favoured in them
when we consider that the country is an island.

If an island, especially an island in a tidal sea, has a good river
system, that system is bound to be of more benefit to it than would be
a similar system to a Continental country. For it must mean that the
tide will penetrate everywhere into the heart of the plains, carrying
the burden of their wealth backward and forward, mixing their peoples,
and filling the whole national life with its energy; and this will be
especially the case in an island which is narrow in proportion to its
length and in which the rivers are distributed transversely to its
axis.

When we consider the river systems of the other great islands of
Europe we find that none besides our own enjoys this advantage. Sicily