nothing of the problem of transportation save as represented by the pack-saddle and "Conestoga" wagon. When looked at from such a standpoint, the lock canal is at once seen to be one of the grandest inventions of any age; it was every whit as far ahead of any system of transportation when it was discovered as the railway is in advance of the best canal today.
From this point of view—that of the comparative value of this method of moving freight over any method known before it—it must seem most inexplicable that the lock canal was the invention of moderns. The simple canal lock, with all its immense benefits, escaped the notice of the builders of pyramids or the "Hanging Gardens," of the Parthenon and of the engineers of the Cloaca Maxima. Egypt, Babylon, Persia, Greece, Rome, with all their vast needs in the way of handling heavy freight, never invented the simple hydraulic lock. And this is the more astonishing because they dug great canals; the Royal Canal of Babylon was twice as long as our American Erie Canal; the Fossa Mariana, from the Rhône to the
