Page:"Round the world." - Letters from Japan, China, India, and Egypt (IA roundworldletter00fogg 0).pdf/262

 ed to the banks sve notice mammoth dredg- ing machines, built eniirely of iron. These were not only censiructed but invented br Use contractors to meet the apecial difiicul- ties and requirements of this serviee. Ten af these gigantic machines, the use of which f never should imagine if I had seen them anywhere ¢lee, cost eighty thousand dollars each, and twenty-five steam barges fo carrr off the dirt browsht up by the exeuyators, 6 fifty thousand dollars each. That thess builtby the contractors will give an ilea of the magnitude of the work.

Four hours slowly steaming through the desert brought us to the Lae Amer or “ Bit+ ter Lake.* This was an oval depression in ifte land, directly ia the track of the pre~ posed canai, and is supposed to have been oviginaliy the head of the Guitof Suez. "The veeeding of the water of the Red Sea left it an tnland basin, from whieh the water haslong ago evaporated, Upon the bed of this hollow veas a layer of sult,in many places several feeb in thickness, When the water of the ed Sca was again let into this bed it formed a ready-made canal, twenty-one miles long, in the widest part ten miles aorezs, asl deep enough for the largest ship. The water dissolving, the salt aceu- niulated in fhe bed of the lake is very bifter, and lienee the nue given lo il. Steaming more rapidly Uhrough this we came toe an- sther section ef the canal proper, eight miles long, which conneets the Bitter Lake with Lake Timsah, six miles across, pon fhe western shove of which is the new dex ert-founded city of Ismailia, From here to Pori Said is forty-five miles, of which three is through Lake Timesah, nineteen across tha desert, and then twenty-six miles to the Mediterranean, throngh the shallow water and deep mud of Lake Menzaleh. This formed a part of the Nile delta, and was originally one of its outlets. Vo excavate a ship canal through the soft slippery mud of ihis marsh, with banks that would stand tho rush of the Mediterranean within, and the occasional storms on the lake outside, for a long time hafiled the utmost ingenuity and skill of the engineers. But when it was dis- covered that by going deep enough ther would come to 2 strong, tenacious clay, un- derlying the centuries of Nile ooze, which being thrown out and mixed with the mud would form a solid bank, this difficulty was overcame. This double dyke is three or four feet high, and within it is buried the iron pipe through which the great “Pompe- few” (steam pump works) at Ismailia,