The Empress will be lighted throughout by electricity, the installation comprising some 600 lights, and will be provided with four 25,000 candle power search lights, each of which will be worked by a separate dynamo. The ship has been built from the designs of Mr. W.H. White, C.B., Director of Naval Construction, and will be fitted out for the use of an admiral, and when commissioned her complement of officers and men will number 700.—Industries.
THE "IRON GATES" OF THE DANUBE.
The work of blowing up the masses of rock which form the dangerous rapids known as the Iron Gates, on the Danube, was inaugurated on September 15, 1890, when the Greben Rock was partially blown up by a blast of sixty kilogrammes of dynamite, in the presence of Count Szapary, the Hungarian premier; M. Baross, Hungarian minister of commerce; Count Bacquehem, Austrian minister of commerce; M. Gruitch, the Servian premier; M. Jossimovich, Servian minister of public works; M. De Szogyenyi, chief secretary in the Austro-Hungarian ministry of foreign affairs; and other Hungarian and Servian authorities. Large 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, however, are by no means the only countries which will be benefited by the opening of the great river to commerce. Turkey, Southern Russia, Roumania, and Bulgaria, not to speak of the states of the west of Europe, will reap advantage from this new departure. England, as the chief carrier of the world, is sure to feel the beneficial effects of the Danube being at length navigable from its mouth right up to the very center of Europe.
The removal of the Iron Gates has always been considered a matter of European importance. The treaty of Paris stipulated for freedom of navigation on the Danube. The London treaty of 1871 again authorized the levying of tolls to defray the cost of the Danube regulation; and article 57 of the treaty of Berlin intrusted Austria-Hungary with the task of carrying out the work. By these international compacts the European character of the great undertaking is sufficiently attested.
The work of blasting the rocks will be undertaken by contractors in the employ of the Hungarian government, as the official invitation for tenders brought no offers from any quarter. The construction of the dams, however, and the cutting of several channels to compass the most difficult rocks and rapids, will be carried out by an association of Pesth and other firms. The cost, estimated altogether at nine million florins, will be borne by the Hungarian exchequer, to which will fall the tolls to be levied on all vessels passing through the Gates until the original outlay is repaid.
Very few persons know, says the American Architect, what an enormous work has been undertaken at the Iron Gates of the Danube, where operations are rapidly progressing, mainly in accordance with a plan devised many years ago by our distinguished countryman, Mr. McAlpine. The total length of that part of the river to be regulated is about two hundred and fifty miles, so that the enterprise ranks with the cutting of the Panama and Suez canals as one of the greatest engineering feats ever attempted. Work has been begun simultaneously at three points: at Greben, where there are reefs to be taken care of; at the cataract, near Jucz, and at the Iron Gate proper, below Orsova. At Greben, where the stream is shallow, but swift, a channel two hundred feet wide is to be blasted out of the rock, and below it a stone embankment wall is to be built more than four miles long. From a reef which projects into the river a piece is to be blasted away, measuring five hundred feet in length, and about nine feet in depth. The difficulties of working in this part of the river are very great. Not only is the current extremely rapid, but in certain places ridges of rock barely covered at low water alternate with pools a hundred and forty feet deep, which give rise, in the rapid current, to frightful whirlpools and eddies. These deep pools are to be filled at the same time that the reefs are cut away, and it is estimated that nearly three million cubic feet of loose stonework will be needed for this purpose alone. In addition to the excavation, artificial banks and breakwaters, for modifying the course of the stream, are to be built; so that it is estimated that the masonry to be executed in this section will amount to about five and one-half million cubic feet.