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Show siinl AEOUT CANAL LOCKS cj HAVE one more story to tell," said the Sandman, "about canal locks, and those readers who are a little too- young to care for such stories I nsk to he patient, for I've had such eager requests for a story or so about canals and their ways! "For the most part I always try to have stories which will be enjoyed by oil stories not too young and not too old. "I have been asked how It is that the locks, in which the boats so as they are on their way up a canal, are kept from overflowing. "They are kept from this by waste lakes and the water runs hack into the main river. These locks through I L try .iJ .-( , m ,c passed out of one of the locks the water wa-ter naturally rushed out, too. "It was exactly as though we were poing up a very gradual flight of steps. Our Irregular course had been made so us to follow the least billy canal route possible. "In the distance we saw the different differ-ent rapids, blue and sparkling and dashing and twisting and turning in the afternoon sunlight. And we were going so slowly along because these rocks of nature which made the rapids forced men to use their wits or else give up inland navigation where they were. "So slowly we went along. It was almost like an old-time drive along a country road. On either side of us were fields and farms and orchards. Sheep grazed alongside the people were so near that we could speak to them. We passed other boats. It didn't seem as though there could be room for us, but there was. They naturally knew what they were doing! "At night the canals were lighted, nud it was like going through Fairyland Fairy-land in a big boat. It seemed so magical that one would not have been surprised at anything! "It took ten hours longer to go along the canal route than it would to go down the river where one could shoot the rapids. The rapids, have certainly shown they were the ones in authority. "Yet there Is something very splendid, splen-did, too, about man's power in not allowing al-lowing nature to get the better of him! For these canals were built along a river which is filled with rapids, and which could not be much used had it not been for what man has done. "We traveled later past many wonderful won-derful islands of all sizes, but I kept thinking of canals and locks and of big boats which could go only through a canal route because where there are rapids big boats cannot go and 'shoot' them, because of the amount Of water wa-ter they draw. "Of course, 1 have only gone along the canals and locks in one part of the country, but I advise anyone who ever has a chance to take a canal trip to do so, for the experience is very interesting and the sensation of being on a boat which rises up, along a river bed through a system of locks is amazing to say the least. "And it doesn't seem to me that it can ever be properly understood untL' one sees it for one's self. 1 know I never understood canals and locks until un-til I saw them for mvself!" (CoDVriirht.l "So Slowly We Went Along." which we went on my cannl trip are forty-five feet wide. There is always some water in the lock because there is always a certain amount of water below the level of the out-take and intake in-take valves. "From a narrow canal one approaches ap-proaches a lock. It is a small space there is just room enough, it seems, for our boat. The gates are opened end in we go. and then the gates are closed. And we are locked in a very SDUg and tight-fitting kind of pen. "After i the pilot gets us in a lock we stay there until enough water has flowed in so we can rise up to the height of the next canal. "Then we go out into the cannl. Whv can't they keep the water in so the boats would not have to go through this waiting every time, I wondered. The answer was apparent enough. When a boat going downstream |