Page:Africa by Élisée Reclus, Volume 1.djvu/447

 TUE SUEZ CANAL. 808 are grazing. Trees have been planted, and not only along the roads ; some places have been »et so thickly as almost to apix>ar like little forests. The route across the delta, on the clear sunny day on which I travelled, was indeed charming, and I had often to remind myself that I was really in Egypt, so totally changed was the picture ; for here and there, also, the tall chimney of some manufactory was to be seen rising alx)ve the trees or over the villages. Egj^pt will soon belong only geographically to Africa ; in everything else it is becoming European. " The condition of the lower classes, also, shows a marked improvement. Ophthalmia, jXThaps the most jminful scourge of Egypt, is now neither so wide- spread nor so intense as formerly ; and if the people are not better fed than they used to bo, they have at least sufficient for their wants. Those inhabiting the towns are rt^narkably improved. In Cairo there are not nearly so many barefooted people as formerly ; and they arc not contented with slippers, but wear European boots. The fellahs, or jx^asants, also are decide<lly improved. Their nmd huts are better built, and especially better roofed ; indeed, here and there peosant houses of quite European type are now to be seen. " No doubt this rapid progress in Egj'pt has its shadow side. Like the children of Israel of old, the people do not work for themselves, but are in heavy bondage almost beyond their powers. Yet this development under high pressure is imdeniably to the advantage of the country. The greatest and most imix)rtant, because most universally active change, is certainly that of the improvement in the climate, brought about by the more extended cultivation, and especially by the numerous plantations of trees. Egypt is in a fair way to overturn its proverbial rainlessness. In Alexandria rain now falls even to excess ; and Cairo, of which the prophet of all travellers, Murray, in his handbook, still maintains that it enjoys at most five or six light showers in the course of the year, had to record not fewer than twenty-one such in the past year. I myself experienced a rainy day there quite as wet as any known in England. The consequences of it were that the unpave<l streets were covered ankle-deep with mud, and all traffic except that in carriages was at an end. •* Naturally the ignorant Arabs ascribe these changes to supernatural agencies, and since the year corresjx)nd8 with that of the ascent of Mohammed Ali to the throne, the witchcraft if. supjwsed to emanate from him and his dynasty." The Suez Canal. The channel between the two seas, after having perhaps existed as a natural artery for a short period during quarternary times, is known to have been indirectly restored by the Pharaohs of the nineteenth dynasty, over thirty-three centuries ago. A tradition recorded by Strabo attributes the construction of the canal to Sesostris. Herodotus also tells us that Nekos, son of Psammaticus, began near Bubastes a canal which skirted the quarries, that is, the hills now knov^-n as the Jebel-Mokattam, thence trending eastwards to the Red Sea. A hundred and twenty thousand hands had already perished on these works of canalisation between the Nile and the coast.