DANIEL DEFOE’S IDEA.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20918, 7 January 1930, Page 8

DANIEL DEFOE’S IDEA.

SHIPS TO CROSS SCOTLAND. A Committee of Investigation has been appointed by the British Minister of Transport to consider proposals for constructing a ship canal across the waist of Scotland, between the Firths Of Forth and Clyde. The distance is only between 30 and 40 miles, according to the route followed. • That amazing man, Daniel Defoe, who thought of almost every possible subject besides creating Robinson Crusoe, started the first scheme of the kind, it is said, in the reign of Queen Anne, with an estimated cost of half a million pounds. Now the talk is of spending from twenty to sixty millions. Defoe spent a good deal of time in Scotland, and wherever he was his mini seethed with projects. He would not be able to look at a map of Scotland without contemplating a ship canal across that narrow waist. ' There is, of course, already an ordinary canal with locks, and a number of proposals for a sea-level canal have been made, but have halted before the doubt whether the traffic would be sufficient to justify the cost. Britain has been very sluggish in Its use Of inland water transport, and good will be done if the Committee of Investigation stirs up the whole nnpatinn. W