Page:Africa by Élisée Reclus, Volume 1.djvu/452

 After the settlement of this important point in physical geography, nothing more apparently remained to be done before proceeding to construct a direct canal across the isthmus. But the first project, presented by M. Paulin Talabot, one of the engineers engaged on the survey, proposed the construction of a canal from Suez through Cairo to Alexandria. This scheme, which has been recently again adopted by some English engineers in opposition to the present undertaking, involved the construction of locks and sluices, in order on both sides to reach the level of the Nile above the head of the delta. It would have also been necessary to provide for a system of flood-gates, to resist and regulate the fluvial inundations, besides a tcw-bridge across the Nile between the two sections of the canal, in order

to tow the vessels from one side to the other. As a highway of navigation, the inferiority of this canal, winding through Lower Egypt, compared with that across the isthmus, dispensing with sluices and nearly three times shorter, is self-evident. But the primary object of this canal, which would have been 240 miles long, was the irrigation of the delta rather than traffic. The interests of navigation and irrigation however being different, and even antagonistic, seeing that shipping requires a low level, while cultivators naturally seek to raise the bed of their artificial streams as high as possible, it would be a mistake to construct a canal


 * John Fowler and Benjamin Baker, "A Sweet-water Ship-canal through Egypt," Nineteenth Century, No. 71, January, 1883.