2008/7/17 Brian J Goggin [EMAIL PROTECTED]: > "Having reached the highest level of the great table-land, we > traversed a space of fifteen miles without a lock; and here a curious > phenomenon, illustrating the incompressibility of water, arrested our > attention. About every twenty or thirty minutes, the horses are > obliged to stop for five or six minutes, to take breath, the cause of > which was this: --- The velocity of the boat impelled the water with > such force that it gradually rose so as to approach the summits of the > banks, when it began to recoil, so as actually to form a back-water or > stream, when the horses were unable to make head, and therefore > stopped until the equilibrium of the canal was restored." > > I have not heard of that phenomenon before. Has anyone else come > across it?
I think everybody who has tried to go too fast along a narrow and shallow canal has suffered from this effect. -- Bob
