Treasure!

I got access to jstor and spent a lot of time pursuing a man named Canvass (or Canvas) White, specifically his trip England to study canals. He came back with drawings, technical innovations, all kinds of information that was crucial to building the Erie Canal. Apparently he's better known for inventing waterproof concrete, so I had to skim through many, many articles from places like Journal of Concrete Engineering before I found anything biographical about him. Unfortunately the England trip wasn't mentioned.

So I took my own trip to England, Googled the Bridgewater Canal figuring from what I've read that that's one that Canvass wouldn't have wanted to miss. Many websites later I found myself at the Canal du Midi, a 240 km water route through France built in 1681 that links the Atlantic and the Mediterranean, eliminating the then month-long trip around Spain.

Websites make conflicting claims about both these canals as being the first of, best of, biggest of, etc. and I found myself once again yearning for CONTEXT. I need a sense of where the information fits into a bigger picture of history if I'm ever to sort out the conflicting claims. Like the CONTEXT I found reading Ronald E. Shaw.

Whimsically I Googled history of canals and landed on two pages of remarkably thoughtful and clear history of canals dating back to the 5th century BCE. Only half a dozen or so canals were discussed, but each was purposefully, even brilliantly chosen, and the author wove their stories together beautifully. But I was still suspicious. Who was this author? Could I trust him or her? How could I check her/him out since there was no byline on the article? I found a button for "how to cite the site," and it turns out that Bamber Gascoigne is responsible for all the content of the site, historyworld.net. Gascoigne wrote a book called The Mughals which I referred to often when I was writing about the Taj Mahal, and which is one of the most thorough, readable, and fascinating histories I've ever read. I poked around a bit on historyworld.net, feeling like a Mughal emperor sifting jewels through his fingers, and what I found was every bit as intelligent as the canal history.