FRENCH CANALS.

Globe, Volume IV, Issue 433, 2 November 1875, Page 4

FRENCH CANALS.

( Times ) The three northernmost ports of France— Calais, Gravelines, and Dunkerque—are about completing increased facilities for an improved connexion with the home and Continental canals and navigable rivers, 'ihe collieries woiked in the departments where they are situated—Valenciennes, Auzin, Lens, Bbthune, Douai, &c.—have within t h i past ten years so greatly increased in numbers and output as nearly to double their yearly yield, which between 1865 and 1874 has risen from three and a half million tons to six and a quarter. French and Belgian coals now compete upon pretty even terms with the English in the majority of the industrial centres of the Northern Departments, gradually driving them towards Normandy and the Western Provinces. Ihe high railway rates forbid an extension of the coal traffic ; French canal freight, which hardly ever falls below two centimes per tonne and kilometre, does not compare favourably with the Belgian, which averages one centime per tonne and kilometre. With a view to a reduction of the canal freight to the Belgian standard and the further development ot the inland coal trade in competition to the railway, a sum of 5,900,000 f (£239,000) has been advanced to Government for the improvement of the canals, navigable rivers, and leeks in the Nord and Pas de-Calais, under the joint guarantee of the General Councils. Chambers of Commerce, colliery companies, and several town councils in those two departments. A uniform depth of two metres of water is to be ensured throughout the system of canals intersecting them and opening into the Belgian or inner home system. The canal of Neuffosse—connecting the Aire Canal at La Bassde with the river Aa, which is the water link between St Omer and the three northernmost ports—the Aa itself, the canals of Bourbourg, Marck, and Calais are to undergo numerous rectifications and be dredged to the depth requisite to secure two metres of water over the sills of the locks. The Scarpe Superieure, between Arras and La Sensee Canal, had already been taken in hand, in 1873 and 1874, These works, taken in connection with those now carried on at Dunkerque, where 12,000,000 f (£480,000) has been advanced by the municipality to Government, to be expended upon the enlargement of dock accommodation, and with those also in course of execution near Calais, where better and larger dock accommodation is provided for in the new harbor scheme, were necessitated by the daily growing feeling of French commerce that the current of trade now so strongly setting towards Osteud and Antwerp should be brought back to French ports, railways, and canals. They are completed by the restoration of the navigable line of the East, including the canalisation of the Meuse, and its junction with the Moselle and Soane, on the one hand, and with the canal connecting the Marne with the Rhine,