speaking of canals...

there is a U.S. song about the Erie canal....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X5RJYisIYlk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HcNJ2RMOd3U

The popular song "Fifteen Miles on the Erie Canal" was written in 1905 by Thomas S. Allen after Erie Canal barge traffic was converted from mule power to engine power, raising the speed of traffic above fifteen miles per day. The tune is sadly nostalgic. ...The song memorializes the years from 1825 to 1880 when the mule barges made boomtowns out of Utica, Rome, Syracuse, Rochester, and Buffalo, and transformed New York into the Empire State.
...Erie is one of the Great Lakes.

one of those You Tube songs is done by George Ward http://www.mulesong.com/

and one of the most famous palindromes is
a man a plan a canal panama
(reads the same backwards and forwards)