The New York herald., 1870-04-12

The Great Baltic Ship Canal.
Another of the imposing projects for the
benefit of commerce which have 80 remark
ably distinguished our day and generation has
lust been revived. In 1860 the Danish statis-
tical writer, Hansen, demonstrated, in very
able and convincing pamphlet, the pressing
necessity OF direct passage for trading ves-
sells from the Baltic Sea to the German Ocean.
His facts and figures made decided impress
sion on the Danish government, and measures
were initiated to survey and open the route
of the proposed canal but the increasing
difficulties of the Schleswlg- Holstein question
interviewed to prevent further prosecution of
the enterprise. Mr.. Hansen gave mass of
valuable statistics and among them the official
reports of the commerce passing through the
Sound and the Elder until the year 1856. But
subsequently the abrogation of the old Danish
control of the Sound tolls at Elsinore rendered
exact data impracticable. However, experts
estimate the number Of craft, great and small,
passing annually between the Baltic and the
North Sea at fully forty thousand, as we learn
by the German and Danish commercial
papers. The Berlingske 1ydende of
Copenhagen puts the computation still higher,
and Hansen gives the list of vessels cast
away on the Jutland coast in 1859 at one
hundred and seventeen, Of which seventy
three were totally lost. Moreover, these
casualties occur at all seasons of the year, and
the navigation of the Belts and the Sound,
involving the passage around the Skaw or
northernmost spit of Jutland is regarded as so
dangerous that the insurance rates in England
for vessels bound to the Baltic ports are much
higher than for Hamburg.
With these facts in view the Boards of
Trade of the Baltic and North Sea mari
time cities have conjointly invited the
attention of the Prussian government to
the subject which had already been
so prominent at Berlin that the Austrian
Cabinet, then considered to be in joint occu-
pancy Of the duchies, we're consulted about it
as early as 1866. The matter is, therefore,
likely to come into the foreground again al
once, and will work revolution in the whole
northeastern maritime trade of Europe. The
line of the canal that seems to win most favor
is from the hourishing port of Kiel directly
across to Tonningen, at the head OF the inlet
of the Elder, on the North Sea side. 1t will
have the important town of Rendsburg for a
halfway station, and thus attract the trade Of
both Schleswig and Holstein, which partly
concentres there. The distance will be
less than seventy miles, the construction
through level country comparatively
easy, and the first cost Of the work not above
twenty three millions of dollars--a sum which
the saving in time, risk, &C., would reimburse
fully within the first ten, perhaps in the first
Ave years. The subject is a most suggestive
one, aud we have merely to consider for a
moment the value Of the immense trade that
pours from England, Scandinavia, Russia,
Northern Germany, Holland, Belgium and the
HanseatIc cities upon those historic water
| highways that stretch between the British
| Channel and the Gulf of Finland in order tt
| see how important to the common progress o
mankind is this new enterprise. A score o
ancient maritime cities and half dozen trad
| ing nations are directly interested in its com
| pletion.