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Comment by INTPenis | Hacker News Reader

But wait; "a canal, nearly a mile long, built for canoe travel". Isn't it relatively easy to carry a canoe for a mile? Especially in those days when they were a lot tougher. Why dig a canal just to float canoes one mile?

Makes me think it was used to float heavier stuff, like goods, wood, maybe even stone. Or for irrigation.

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Well if you're traveling you'd have a canoe full of supplies which may not be so easy to carry.

A modern aluminum canoe, or a hide-covered one, sure. A dugout, which is implied in the article, not so much. And, as you say, if transporting goods it would have been much less work. No pack animals, so everything was moved by human power.

I expect that the people who dug this canal did carry dugout canoes over this same route. Knowing the alternative can strongly motivate you to make the improvement.

Well you don’t just send a canoe for the heck of it. You put the goods, wood, or stone into the canoe.

They were not building it for people going out for a recreational canoe. They would surely have stuff in the Canoe that they don't want to carry a mile along with the canoe.

If you read the article more carefully you'd see that area in question was a marsh, making it difficult to carry. It was only used in wetter seasons. And the people who lived there did not practice agriculture

If they are a lot tougher, then wouldn't they also find it easier to build a canal?

How about dropping logs into it and pulling them along. Beats wheels!

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