numbers of the inhabitants had collected on both banks of the Danube
to witness the ceremony, and the first explosion was greeted with
enthusiastic cheers. The history of this great scheme was told at the
time the Hungarian Parliament passed the bill on the subject two years
ago. It is known that the Roman Emperor Trajan, seventeen centuries
ago, commenced works, of which traces are still to be seen, for the
construction of a navigable canal to avoid the Iron Gates.

For the remedy of the obstruction in the Danube, much discussed of
late years, there were two rival systems--the French, which proposed
to make locks, and the English and American, which was practically
the same as that of Trajan, namely, blasting the minor rocks and
cutting canals and erecting dams where the rocks were too crowded. The
latter plan was in principle adopted, and the details were worked out,
in 1883, by the Hungarian engineer Willandt. The longest canal will be
that on the Servian bank, with a length of over two kilometers and a
width of eighty meters. It will be left for a later period to make the
canal wider and deeper, as was done with the Suez Canal. For the
present it is considered sufficient that moderate sized steamers shall
be able to pass through without hindrance, and thus facilitate the
exchange of goods between the west of Europe and the east.

The first portion of the rocks to be removed, and of the channels to
be cut, runs through Hungarian territory; the second portion is in
Servia. The new waterway will, it is anticipated, be finished by the
end of 1895, and then, for the first time in history, Black Sea
steamers will be seen at the quays of Pesth and Vienna, having, of
course, previously touched at Belgrade. The benefit to Servian trade
will then be quite on a par with that of Austria-Hungary. Even Germany
will derive benefit from this extension of trade to the east. These,