Word: waterway
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Once they were the undisputed mistresses of the world's greatest commercial waterway. They still evoke memories of a long-departed era that Mark Twain -whose very nom de plume is derived from navigation terminology of the day -described in Life on the Mississippi. Today the great paddle-wheeling river steamboat is a species almost as endangered as the whooping crane-and likewise protected by the Government. The last wooden-decked steamboat, the 50-year-old Delta Queen, plies the 1,500 miles of river from Cincinnati to New Orleans under a special congressional exemption from the federal safety...
...Texas last week, Ronald Reagan thundered about the canal: "We bought it. We paid for it. We built it. And we are going to keep it." As President, Reagan vowed, he would say just that to any "tinhorn dictator" in Panama who sought to gain control over the waterway. The Reagan theatrics, designed to win him support in his dead-even showdown with Gerald Ford in the Texas primary on May 1, drew strong applause...
...official U.S. view is that there is no reason, military or economic, not to return the 51-mile-long canal. Neither supertankers nor the biggest U.S. aircraft carriers can squeeze through it. Yielding the waterway, moreover, would remove a major irritant in U.S. relations with Latin Americans, who have long resented the second-class status of Panamanians in the zone. But in return for giving up the canal and increasing payments to the Panamanian government for its use, the U.S. wants operating control at least until the beginning of the 21st century...
...near the town of Qantara, and approached Lake Timsah near Ismailia, where old canal remnants have previously been found. Though wind, sand and irrigation works have wiped out much of the canal's course, Geologists Amihai Sneh, Tuvia Weissbrod and Itamar Perath hint at an intriguing possibility: the waterway may have split in two, one branch following a great east-west depression called Wadi Tumilat to link with the Nile, the other continuing south into the Red Sea along a route that became part of a canal system later built by the Persian conqueror Darius...
...waterway probably ranged in depth from 7 ft. to 10 ft., adequate for ancient barges, but the embankments were 200 ft. apart, much wider than necessary for the water traffic of that day. The Israeli scientists think they know why. Writing in American Scientist, they point out that a wide channel would have made it an effective barrier against invaders from the east, a constant threat to ancient Egypt. In addition, it would have provided essential irrigation water. Could the ancient Egyptians have built such a great canal? Yes, say the geologists. After all, hundreds of years earlier the Egyptians...