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Show a. ,t.. , ,3 ,j, ,j, ''NEARBY ANDf :j YONDER " A ' ,f i f , ,-; X.. ,. . ' . By T. T. MAXEY , 4 4 .fr .ft ...fr-.fr-.fr-j. Thd Wetland Ship Canal AWELLAND canal bas afforded passageway between Lake Erie and Ontario for well olgb a hundred . years. The original Wellnnd waa Orst ailed Id 182a It wa 27tf mllea long 22 feet wide, 8 feet deep and con talned 40 locke, each 110 feet Ion It waa enlarged, rebuilt and again placed In service In 1840, Tbe prea ent canal, whlcb repreaenta another atep-op In alta, waa opened In 1882 Tbe oaa now building probably will be ready for aerrtct aome time dor Ing 103a baa been bollt to dlmen alona which It la thought will be auf flclentiy large to meet tbe Increased alze of cargo vessels plying tbe Great takes for many years to come, It will be 29 miles long, 80 feet wide, 20 feet deep and bare 7 locks each 800 feel long and 80 feet deep with a lift of 40 feet wblcb will lift or lower paa Inx vessels the 82.1 H feet wblcb rep resents the difference to level between be-tween the two lakes. Some 4,000 vessels ves-sels pass tbrougb tbe present canal annually. Some conception of the magnitude of the work of constructing the new ship canal can be gained from the fuel that some 6,000,000 wagon-loads of rock and 40,000,000 wagon-loads of eartb had to be excavated, while enouKb concrete was need to build solid wall 20 feet high. 0 feet thick and 100 miles long. The time required to paBS a loaded vessel through the completed canal will approximate 8 hours, as against 19 to 18 hoars with tbe present canal Tbe cost of the completed Job will approach $100,000,000. The Los Angeles Aqueduct "pUB Los Angeles aqueduct Is "as 1 long as England la wide. It goes under mountains, through 142 tunnels and crosses a desert as large aa the stale of Massachusetts." It was built to Insure the largest city on onr western west-ern const with a sufficient and ever lasting supply of pure water, cost $24,- mtm, took Ave years to build aa many aa Ove thousand men worked on It at a time. Is bailed aa a spectacular spec-tacular feat of engineering and measures meas-ures np to the Job. High np In the Sierra mountains there waa fresh water galore, but that was 250 mllea away and the San Fernando valley lay betweea But the need outweighed tbe handicap and to work they went The Owens river waa tnpped and 250 mllea of open and covered canala and massive steel conduits constructed ; 81 giant storage reservoirs created along the way the largest, Ualwee, capable of handling 20,000,000,000 gallons annually, an-nually, mode available to this City of the Saints a daily water supply of approximately 220,100,000 gallons. The constant movement of such a great quantity of water presented a too-good-to-be-true opportunity for tbe development of large quantities of cheap electric power, tbrougb the construction of a string of generating plants located at strategic points. The combined water and power system la one of the largest municipally owned planta of the kind In the world.- The King of Convention Halls THE United States having developed devel-oped into a nation of gatherings and might be said to be suffering from conventlonltla, a convention hall tor the proper bousing of possible multl-tudia multl-tudia whlcb may descead npon It to discuss or display this, that or the other, become almoat a necessity for any self-respecting large city. Convention Con-vention balls went Dp "nearby and yonder" and boasts of having the largest larg-est or the Hneat were beard. Finally, Atlantic City nook the bull by tbe horns," so to speak, and settled the question, for a time at least, by building build-ing the most mastodonle ball on earth. This giant structure covers seven acres, seats 41,000 persona In - the main auditorium alone there are a host of smaller meeting rooms with capacities ranging from 150 persona up, cost the tidy sum of $15,000,000 and Is located directly across tbe street from tbe Atlantic ocean. It holds what is claimed to be the largest larg-est stage In the world, one of the largest pipe organs over built, a skat-. skat-. ing rink, swimming pool, ballroom capable of- accommodating 5,000 persons per-sons and what not. , A 13-story building, 600 feet long and 200 feet wide could be boused In the main auditorium; railroad trains . van be operated to the entrance; automobiles auto-mobiles can be driven right Into It; the air In the Interior can be changed every seven minutes, washed and cooled In summer and beated in win-, win-, ter; 200,000 tons of snd were moved to make way for it and 12,000 tons, of steel, 42,000 cubic yards of concrete, con-crete, 65,000 barrels of cement, 25,000 tons of sand, 53,000 toes of stone and 10.000.000 brick went Into its construction. con-struction. (& l2 Weetern Newepaper Onion.) |