Page:H. D. Traill - From Cairo to the Soudan Frontier.djvu/38

88 ultimate destination. The Mohammedan conquerors of Egypt tinkered, like their forerunners, with the ancient fresh-water canal system; and Amr Ibn-el-Asi used it for the transport of grain from his newly-founded Fostat—the Cairo of later times—to Suez, en route for Arabia; but under the Abbassides it fell into complete disuse. Venice, again, hankered, as might be expected, after a short cut through the isthmus to that gorgeous East which she "held in fee"; but she, too, followed her predecessors to decay without having done anything to realise her idea; while, unfortunately, the latest successor of Venice as the great trading State of the world allowed political apprehensions to chill her ancient spirit of commercial enterprise, and held aloof from that great project of re-uniting the two seas from which she has been so incomparably the greatest gainer, both in wealth and power.

To an Englishman who steams for the first time between the two-mile long breakwaters