The difference between a canal and a river is that
a river is the work of Nature, and a canal is a channel for water made by men.
Actually canal is a way of supplying water to the
areas where there is no water. In a country like Pakistan Canals are very
important because ours in a developing and agricultural country. Without canals
we cannot irrigate our lands and we cannot grow proper vegetables. That is why
canal has great importance here.
Canals, or water-channels, have been made by men
for two different purposes. Some have been made for the purpose of carrying
goods by boats and ships from one place to another. In England, which, being a
cold and rainy country, does not need canals for irrigation, canals were made
before the days of railways for this purpose. In these days the roads were few
and bad, and the cost of spending heavy goods by carts was great; but when
these canals were made, such goods could travel much more cheaply from town to
town in barges and boats. When the steam-engine was invented and railways were
made, these canals went a good deal out of use, because goods could be sent
much more quickly by rail; but they are still used for heavy goods, like
bricks, when there is no curry, because such things can go much more cheaply by
canal than they can by rail.
There are also two famous sea-canals for the
passage of ship--the Suez Canal and the Panama Canal. By the former, ships from
Europe can come straight to Pakistan instead of having to go right round
Africa; and by the Panama Canal, the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans re connected.
in Pakistan, canals have been made mainly for irrigation.
Some area totally depends for its harvests on the monsoon, which is uncertain.
If the monsoon fails, the crops die for lack of rain, and there is famine. And
yet there is plenty of water, which runs away in the rivers uselessly to the
sea. But by the wonderful irrigation system of the Punjab, a great deal of the
water of these rivers is spread over the land by a network of canals. In the
Punjab alone, over four million acres are watered by these canals. These canals
have brought great wealth to the Punjab, and turned whole deserts into fertile
farms.