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THE “IRON GATES” OF THE DANUBE.

The work of blowing up the masses of rock which form the dangerous rapids known as the Iron Gates, on the Danube, was inaugurated on September 15, 1890, when the Greben Rock was partially blown up by a blast of sixty kilogrammes of dynamite, in the presence of Count Szapary, the Hungarian premier; M. Baross, Hungarian minister of commerce; Count Bacquehem, Austrian minister of commerce; M. Gruitch, the Servian premier; M. Jossimovich, Servian minister of public works; M. De Szogyenyi, chief secretary in the Austro-Hungarian ministry of foreign affairs; and other Hungarian and Servian authorities.  Large numbers of the inhabitants had collected on both banks of the Danube to witness the ceremony, and the first explosion was greeted with enthusiastic cheers.  The history of this great scheme was told at the time the Hungarian Parliament passed the bill on the subject two years ago.  It is known that the Roman Emperor Trajan, seventeen centuries ago, commenced works, of which traces are still to be seen, for the construction of a navigable canal to avoid the Iron Gates.

For the remedy of the obstruction in the Danube, much discussed of late years, there were two rival systems—­the French, which proposed to make locks, and the English and American, which was practically the same as that of Trajan, namely, blasting the minor rocks and cutting canals and erecting dams where the rocks were too crowded.  The latter plan was in principle adopted, and the details were worked out, in 1883, by the Hungarian engineer Willandt.  The longest canal will be that on the Servian bank, with a length of over two kilometers and a width of eighty meters.  It will be left for a later period to make the canal wider and deeper, as was done with the Suez Canal.  For the present it is considered sufficient that moderate sized steamers shall be able to pass through without hindrance, and thus facilitate the exchange of goods between the west of Europe and the east.

The first portion of the rocks to be removed, and of the channels to be cut, runs through Hungarian territory; the second portion is in Servia.  The new waterway will, it is anticipated, be finished by the end of 1895, and then, for the first time in history, Black Sea steamers will be seen at the quays of Pesth and Vienna, having, of course, previously touched at Belgrade.  The benefit to Servian trade will then be quite on a par with that of Austria-Hungary.  Even Germany will derive benefit from this extension of trade to the east.  These, however, are by no means the only countries which will be benefited by the opening of the great river to commerce.  Turkey, Southern Russia, Roumania, and Bulgaria, not to speak of the states of the west of Europe, will reap advantage from this new departure.  England, as the chief carrier of the world, is sure to feel the beneficial effects of the Danube being at length navigable from its mouth right up to the very center of Europe.