David Hyder asked L.E. Modesitt Jr.:

I just finished Assassin's Price and because of some things I've been researching I became curious on the issue of transportation. Most references are to the Rex's Post roads but the only references to river or canal transport was that the river froze early. The 18th Century saw a boom in canal construction. Why no canals?

L.E. Modesitt Jr. Actually, there was a Great Canal that played a large part in the earlier books about Quaeryt, but there was never more than one, and in the end it didn't work economically. The simplest answer to your question is that to have canals, you need comparatively dense populations not too far apart; you need water sources; and you need comparatively flat terrain. Very little of Solidar meets those requirements. There are only three rivers of significant size in Solidar and they're essentially isolated, although for more than a hundred years the Grand Canal did provide a connection between the River Aluse and the River Laar.

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