They decided to dig a canal to change the situation.

他们决定挖一条水渠来改变这一状况。

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Joliet suggested to his superiors that France dig a canal through the moraine to create a direct water route from Montreal to New Orleans.

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The key was not to try to dig a Suez-type of canal, a great sea-level trench from ocean to ocean, but to create a lock-and-lake canal, where the ships are lifted up by a series of locks to a man-made lake, and then they sail across that lake, and then they are set back down on the other side by another series of locks.

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