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TAE Marine. REVIEW 23 to completion. The contractors are scouring the country for Norway and tamarack piling to be used as underpin- ning for the dock, and have placed orders for a part of the supply needed. UTILITY OF THE ERIE CANAL Buffalo, Oct. 10.--These are the days when the trans- portation world longs for a more efficient waterway east- ward and it appears that the period of this sort of feeling grows with each year. It came on very early this year, in fact before the fall was fairly begun, and its intensity at present is shown by the report that the poor little canal fleet, which has been doing but little during the slack grain movement through the summer, is now all taken up and it is said that ten times the capacity could be used if it were to be had. So it appears that however much we are going to need the enlarged canal it may not be such a very busy thoroughfare all through the season. This makes it all the more necessary for canal boatmen to emphasize still further, than ever before the need of boats built as cheaply as possible. The other day I asked an old canalman--there are a few of them left yet--if the new 1,000-ton barges would be built of steel, and he'said they would not, for the cost would be too great. This cheapness of the boat is the great advantage enjoyed by the canal and it is to be hoped that it can be kept up when the larger size is built. As a rule the conveyance is worth much more than its load, wagon or car or steamer, -but the canal is a conspicuous exception to the rule. A boat that never cost much over $3,000 and may not be worth over half that amount will carry a cargo of wheat that has been worth more than $10,000 this season. It is believed that the new barge, with a capacity four times as great need not cost four times as much. Then the boatman can as now make it his home and be at small expense when it is idle. The comparisons of the competitive chances of rail and waterways do not usually - take this fact into consideration. So if it happens that the enlarged Erie canal is of most, or even of sole ac- count as a handler of the overflow in freight movements it may be able to do well, that, is, earn a profit to its operators as well as relieve the congestion at such times as this. As such the railroads ought to welcome canals everywhere and they ought to own canal fleets of their own to save them from keeping a vast equipment of cars to be used three months of the year. The difficulty now is that they merely provide cars enough to do the bulk of the business promptly and let the rest of it wait. If the money lost by shippers and others concerned in the commerce of the country were laid out in appliances to obviate such loss there would be an equipment far in excess of the present. It is just here that the canal steps in to meet the emer- gency. This port is just beginning to feel the car short- age in grain movements and if the amount of grain going east this fall is what is expected there will be a blockade such as has not been known here, much as we Have suffered from such stoppages in the past. The canal fleet is too small to cut any figure in the case and the roads are worse overloaded than they have ever been before. The | car shortage began earlier than ever before and it is expected to last till there is difficulty from snow to delay freight movement. What a relief it will be to return to canal transporta- tion after waiting weeks for a car and never getting half as many as are wanted. The state of things is so dis- tressing that there is a sort of warfare going on most of the time between shippers and freight agents all along the line. Buffalo is large enough to be the receiver of a great amount of loaded cars that can be taken at once for outgoing business, but take a way point that needs cars and there is a state of things in existence now that is close to a panic. I found such to be the case the other tay at Tonawanda. The lake barges bring in a matter of 125 cars of lumber every day, of 'which nea'ly ail is destined for reshipment. The canal fleet is exhausted by the sudden demand and after that there is dependence only on cars that for the most part must come in empty from some other quarter, when every shipping point is crazy for cars. The situation is terrible. I do not believe the railroads have it in their power to stop the fast-increasing recurrence of this state of things. Certain it is that they are making no progress towards it now. At one time the increased size of cars and the corresponding increased power of the locomotives was doing something in this line, but that is at an end. It will be noted that the added facilities of this sort all came in after the railroad building stopped. What is to be done now. The roads:are making money fast enough and they are not eager to do anything. Why should they? Plainly we are back again close to the age of a return to canal building, -There seems to be no other way out of. the régular fall tie-up of business. It is likely that other sections will wait to see how the new Erie canal comes out, but they will be sorry if they do. By that time the country will have lost enough by delays to build a host of canals. JoHN CHAMBERLIN. CANADIAN MAILS AND TURBINE DEVELOPMENT The two splendid twin-screw steamships which the Fairfield company has now in an advanced stage of construction for the Canadian Pacific Railway Co. are expected to be in com- mission early next summer; they are to be named Empress of Britain and Empress of Ireland, and the first will be launched early in November. They are of 14,500 tons each, 550 ft. in length, 64 ft. beam, and their twin engines, of the "balanced" reciprocating kind, will be of Such power designed to drive them 19 knots in service. The design and equipment of the vessels are such as render them equally serviceable for the passenger service on the Pacific, with the existing fleet of the company, or on the Atlantic; and, notwithstanding the success of the Allan Line Co. in again securing the contract for the carriage of the mails between this country and the Dominion, the new Canadian Pacific railway's vessels will be put on the Atlantic service between Liverpool and Montreal. The mail contract recently arranged with the Allan line is, on this occasion, only for a term of five years, in spite of the tender having been made on the basis of a ten-years' period. It is reported that Sir Richard Cartwright, the Canadian min- ister of trade, was favorable to the tender of the Canadian Pacific Railway Co., but the fact of the Allan line having already in service such fast up-to-date vessels as the turbine liners Virginian and Victorian was the outweighing consid- eration. Turbine propulsion in ocean mail steamers is not yet the thoroughly approved matter, as regards lasting effi- ciency, cost of upkeep, etc., which the reciprocating engine can claim to be. The. projected new North German Lloyd liner, for example ,is to have reciprocating engines as the result of weighing all the pros and cons of the two systems. The placing on the Atlantic, therefore, of the two Canadian Pacific Railway Co.'s vessels, having reciprocating ~ engines, promises to have an immediate interest, from an engineering standpoint, as well as that more remote interest concerned with the competition for and placing of the next Canadian mail contract. epbhe Melacd Steel Co,, Sparrow's Point, Md., will deliver the ferryboat Bronx to the Department of Docks, New York, in a few days.