This canal has features about it unlike other similar projects. It connects fresh water with salt water. Briefly described, the entire work consists in coupling up Lake Washington with Lake Union (which lies in the very heart of the city of Seattle), and in connecting Lake Union with Salmon Bay (which is in the suburb of Ballard, where some of the world's largest saw mills are in operation day and night). Few cities, the size of Seattle, can boast of a canal, navigable for deep-sea craft, running right through town. All along the route of the canal, particularly at Salmon Bay, Lake Union, and Union Bay, series of piers will be built for the accommodation of vessels.

The bodies of water, salt and fresh, which are being connected up, are so close together that comparatively little excavation is necessary. This fact appealed to the city's settlers years ago, and the project has been talked of ever since that time.

Lake Washington is thirty miles long by ten miles wide. It is very deep, and steamers drawing considerable water ply it. In an emergency the entire American navy might hide on the pretty lake and be safe from the enemy. By heavily mining the entrance to the canal on the sea-side, or, in a pinch, by obstructing the canal, the Pacific fleet could make itself immune from capture until doomsday.

But the canal is not being built in anticipation of anything of this sort. It is strictly a highway of commerce, and

the fortifications will consist in saw mills, factories, warehouses, and other industrial institutions.

The canal develops two miles of additional water front at Ballard, and here a double breakwater is to be constructed (extending well out into the salt-water basin of Puget Sound), to protect steamers and log booms from thick weather, while negotiating an entrance. Salmon bay, Lake Union, and Lake Washington will be lined with wharves, and altogether thousands of acres, suitable for tidewater factory sites, will be realized. The industries will be saved the heavy expense of lightering and transferring cargoes. All told, some one hundred miles of fresh-water, non-freezing, nontidal shore line will be gained, totaling twenty-four thousand acres of navigable water, ranging from forty to two hundred feet in depth. This, plus the bay front and the Duwamish waterway, will give Seattle a wharfage area as great, if not greater, than any other city.

The biggest cuts in the Lake Washington project are between the eastern shore line of Lake Union-a deep body of water in the city's midst skirted by trolleys, boulevards, and busy factoriesand Union Bay, and they total six hundred and ten thousand cubic yards, although the distance is but half a mile. As Union Bay is at present navigable only for small vessels, nearly four hundred thousand yards of dredging will be necessary. But no dredging at all will be necessary on Lake Washington-for there, whole fleets of dreadnaughts could

be swallowed whole. The drop of from forty to two hundred feet to deep water begins almost at the lake's shore line.

An expensive system of bulkheads and pierheads will be provided by the Government on Shitshole Bay in front of Ballard. The cost of these will be in the neighborhood of fifty thousand dollars. An elaborate system of lights will also be installed here, while a large, brilliant tower-light will guide craft into the Lake Washington entrance.

This little canal project outshines its big brother at Panama in point of number of visitors. Not every one has the price of passage to Central America to see the greatest job ever undertaken by man, but hundreds of Americans find time and means to "see the dirt fly" in this miniature marvel. Because of this, the government engineers have built, at a high altitude, a commodious observation platform which, overlooking the canal locks and the ditch itself, is for the benefit of those interested in such work. In addition, a winding automobile road makes it possible for a car to make a

complete circuit of the work without having to return over the same route.

Not content with the newest venture in canals at Seattle, the State of Washington is going in for another canal project. Already, benevolent "Uncle Sam" has been induced to allot sixty-two thousand five hundred dollars for a canal at Oak Bay, near the town of Port Townsend, the port of entry for the Puget Sound country. But this project will be a watch-charm affair compared to Panama, and a juvenile, back-yard task beside Lake Washington's man-made river.

Port Townsend lies on the Olympic Peninsula and is now accessible by steamer only, although one or more of the trans-continental railroads are about to give the country a road from Cape Flattery to a point somewhere in the vicinity of the port of entry. Opposite Port Townsend is Marrowstone Point, a natural obstruction, which necessitates a round-about course for vessels journeying to Seattle and Tacoma. Rounding this point lengthens the trip by an hour, or an hour and a half. Time is as pre

cious out west as anywhere else and that is why Marrowstone Point is being conspired against by commerce. A narrow sand spit, only a few feet wide, separates Port Townsend Bay from Oak Bay. By cutting a small channel, or portage, through this spit, Port Townsend Sound traffic will be saved the time-consuming trip around Marrowstone, and, by making the port of entry closer to the upsound metropolis, an hour at the very least will be saved. At one time there was a channel for small craft across the spit, but in late years it has been closed by the accumulation of sand and, drift wood.

Washington has, in Hood's canal, one of the largest natural salt-water canals in the world. Certainly it is the most Certainly it is the most scenic waterway of the kind anywhere. In places the stone cliffs tower straight

up for many feet. By digging a canal, only six miles long, from Hood's canal across Mason county to Puget Sound, the whole of Kitsap county could be transformed into an island. Whether or not this will ever be done is a matter for conjecture. It would shorten considerably the distance between Port Townsend and Olympia, the state capital.

At best it's a long jump from 1821 to 1915-nearly a century. During that time we will have constructed, here at home, nearly fifty canals, large and small, besides having undertaken the world's biggest job at Panama. In other words we have just about averaged a completed canal every two years. The cost, it should be added, is trifling-something beyond a billion. But the good cannot be reckoned in dollars and cents-not just at this time anyway.

T

HIRTY-SIX boys of the Columbia Park Boys' Club of San Francisco started March 30th for a tour of the world. Before leaving the United States, these boys are to visit twelve large cities, in each of which one additional boy is to be selected to go along. Boston is the last of the cities to be visited, and when the Boston boy has been found, the party will sail for England. After touring the British Isles, the company will go overland to Genoa, Italy. From there they will sail for Australia, which continent they will tour. On the home stretch they will

visit the Philippine Islands, Japan, and Hawaii. In accordance with the long established custom of this unusual and highly organized boys' club, all expenses of this world tour will be paid by receipts from entertainments-musical, theatrical, and athletic-given on the way.

But the really significant thing about this globe encircling trip is neither its extent nor its methods. The really important thing is, that it has in view, not the immediate pleasure and profit of the boys of the party, but the uplift of boy life in general. This long journey is in furtherance of plans for a World Congress of Boys to be held in San Francisco