Page:"Round the world." - Letters from Japan, China, India, and Egypt (IA roundworldletter00fogg 0).pdf/259

 Tequired, in aecorduncve with the report of a- commission sent out by Napoleon I, in 1708: This idea was exploded by more accurate surveys made fifty yeays afterwards. The next objection was that the channel would have to be made through hopeless quicksands at the southern or Suez end, and through centuries of Wile ooze at the northern part near the Mediterranean, where no channel could be made permanent, but the more you dug and dredged the worse it would be. Thi+ obstacle disappeared when it was proved that for mostof the route the bauks of thy canal would not be of fuid sand, but of mud, elay and shelly carth—that below the Nilv voze and slippery mad of Lake Menzaleb there was a ‘“‘hard pan” of clay, which, thrown up, gave solidity to the banks—and that so smatla portion of the route passed through louse sand that no real trouble threatened the canal from the instability ef its banks. Thess objections being disposed of, it was then urged that the sand drift irom the sirroccos of the desert would refill the canal as fast az ib could be remoyed, thereby causing guch immense expense iu keeping the channel open, as to ruin the great enterprise financially, Dut ithas been demonsirated by experience thai not more than five miles of its entire length 1s lable to this drifting in of the sand; and at thes: places the encroachments of sand never ex- eeed two yards in depth a month, which the company has contracted fo be remoyed, ab oO great expense, us fast as it aceumu- lates.

To Ferdinand de Lesseps, ihe “* £onde- teur” of the ennel, us le is called, the world is indebted for having pushed through this magnifeent worl in the face of every ol- staele, real and imaginary. With perfect mith in the eventual suceess of the enter- prise, like Cyrus W. Field of Atlantie cable memory, he persevere when less sanguine isen would have given up in despair; and tohim belongs the credit of having opened this second Gibraltar inlet and outlet to the commerce of the world, {had the pleasure of meeting AF. de Lesseps iu Suex—a fine- joking man of sixty, with wove brains tau half the potentates of Europe, whose name stould rank with Bismarck as one of the great men of the nineteenth eentury,

Stis true thatthe Suez canal is a Wrench work, but it is not owned, uor in any way xontrolled by the French government, Ov the 400,000 shares representing the stock, — 176,000 belong to the Viceroy of Egypt, Ismail Pacha, without whose active and