Egypt of the Pharaohs and of the Khedivé

by F. Barham Zincke

Suez is in a state of rapid decay. Many houses are untenanted. This has been caused by the diversion of the traffic. What formerly passed through the town now passes by it on the Canal. Here, again, the hotel is good. Its Hindoo waiters are to be preferred to the Italian waiters of Alexandria and Cairo. They are clean, quiet, and alert. Nature seems to have fitted them for the employment, but perhaps you might think they have heads for something better.

I was two days in passing through the Canal from end to end. For this purpose I chartered at Suez, jointly with two friends who happened to be with me, a small steamer. It was an open boat that might have held four passengers. The crew consisted of three men. The distance is about one hundred miles. Herodotus gives it very accurately when he says that the Isthmus has a width of one thousand stadia.

To one who is on the look out for beautiful scenery and stirring life, the two days’ steaming from Suez to Port Saïd will not give much pleasure. As long as you are on the actual Canal, you pass along a straight water-way between two high banks of sand. The sky overhead is the only additional object in Nature. There is no vegetation. There are but few birds. There is no animal on the banks, or insect in the air. At long intervals there are small wooden shanties for watering stations. A great many dredging machines are passed. Some are at work; but the greater part of them are rusting, and rotting. They are large floating structures, moved and worked by steam. Each of them costs between five and six thousand pounds. Their business is to dredge up the mud, or sand from the bottom of the Canal to a lofty stage which each carries, a little above the level of the bank. From this elevation what is dredged up is run down on an incline to the point on the bank where it is to be deposited, and there shot out. They are called mud-hoppers. They are hideous-looking objects; of all the works of man that float the most unsightly: but they are what you here see most of. You occasionally have the excitement of meeting a small steamer, carrying some official on the business of the Canal, or for his own pleasure. The officials have quite a fleet of these little steamers: almost every one his own. The rarest object on the Canal is that for which it was constructed: a vessel of one, or two, thousand tons passing through it. On the first day we saw three. This was a good day. On the second day, our good luck, and that of the Canal, continuing, we saw the same number. But, as the wind was fresh, two of the three had got aground: of these two one was an English troop ship with a regiment for India on board. Three little steam tugs were hauling away at each. It is difficult to say how large vessels, drawing within an inch or two of the greatest depth of water, and which is to be found only in the mid-channel, can manage to keep out of trouble: the margin for inattention, bad steering, for not making proper allowance for wind, &c., being not far from nil. There are mooring posts all the way along to enable one ship to make fast while another goes by. The company’s regulations give them the power of blowing up a vessel they consider hopelessly grounded.

But you are not always in a straight watercourse, between two high mounds of sand. The two Bitter Lakes, and the Lakes Timsah and Ballah, are passed through, and cover nearly half the distance. In the large Bitter Lakes you are pretty nearly out of sight of land. A glass shows you that there is a slight rise in the ground along their shores, upon which are seen, here and there, stunted tamarisks, more like shrubs than trees. The bed of these lakes, before the water was admitted, was full of detached trees of this species. They grew larger on the lower ground. The tops of some are still seen in and above the water. If, therefore, you leave the channel which is buoyed out for you, you stand a chance of being snagged. I take it for granted that in old time when none but sweet water from the Nile, brought by the Bubastis and Babylon Canals, was admitted to this district, much land now under salt water, and much more in the neighbourhood, was then under cultivation.

The evaporation from the surface of the Bitter Lakes, as might be expected in the hot dry desert, is enormous. This I was told had perceptibly affected the climate, making it more cloudy, and more inclined to occasional showers. Of course, whatever effect it has had, must be in this direction; but seeing how small a proportion these lakes bear to the contiguous seas, I am disposed to think the amount of this effect very slight. There is, however, another effect of this rapidity of evaporation, which we may measure, and weigh, and which is felt by the fish. It increases the proportion of salt in the water to such an amount, that in summer one gallon of water yields thirteen ounces of salt: a gallon of Dead Sea water yields eighteen ounces. This, last summer, killed almost all the different species of fish that had come into the lakes the previous autumn, on the first opening of the connexion with the two seas. I was told that at that time, the surface of the water was covered with the dead. It is believed that some species proved, by surviving, that they possessed a power of resisting a degree of saltness they had never been exposed to before.

Lake Timsah is a large natural basin in the very centre of the Isthmus. As its area is much less than the Bitter Lakes, while its shores are higher, and more irregular, it possesses an approach to something like a kind of picturesqueness you might not have been expecting. In this midland harbour we found a fleet of large vessels: some of them men-of-war; some even ironclads. A sense of surprise comes over you at seeing not only a pleasing expanse of water in the thirsty, scorching waste (how one wishes it were fresh water), but in addition a fleet of mighty ships in the mid-desert.

The traffic of the Canal is increasing rapidly; and, I think, for obvious reasons must go on increasing, till it has absorbed the whole of the traffic of Europe with Asia. At first people were not prepared for it. They had not the data requisite for their calculations, and so they would hardly have been justified in building steamers in advance of the demonstration of the practicability, and advantages of the route. That demonstration is now complete: and I suppose there are now very few sailing vessels being built in this country, or anywhere else, for trading with the East. This part, therefore, of the question, may, I take it for granted, be regarded as settled. I saw one of the P. and O. boats, the Candia, passing through the Canal. The whole of its fleet must eventually make use of it. The only wonder is that they do not do so at once; for, while they are hesitating, multitudes of other steamers, built for the India and China trade, and in which every improvement for economizing coal, and for the convenience and comfort of the passengers, has been adopted, have been put upon the line of the Canal. And as the majority of passengers object to the trouble and expense of being hurried overland from Suez to Alexandria, a great many of the old customers of the P. and O. Company, and of travellers who would have been glad to use the boats of so well-known a concern, are now going by these new boats which take the through route. And this is only what the P. and O. Company must, like the rest of the world, come to at last. Their delay is only driving the custom into the hands of their rivals. It is in fact creating, and maintaining those rivals. When, however, they have taken to the Canal, this single company will pay for its use more than 100,000l. a year: for they will be bound to despatch, as they do now, a vessel each way each week. The tonnage of their vessels will not be less than two thousand. The Canal charges are 8s. a ton, so much for each berth for passengers, and some other items, which together bring up the total to not far short of 10s. a ton. This on a vessel of not less than 2,000 tons, will not be less than 1,000l.[10] Each way this will have to be paid. But it is what others are doing; and it will be, on the whole, a gain over the present system of land-transport, for passengers and cargo from Suez to Alexandria, and vice versâ; and practically, whatever it may be on paper, at no loss of time.

For the Canal to take 100,000l. a year from one company would seem a great deal: but it is a sum that is soon absorbed in the expenses of so big a concern. I understood that at the beginning of this year: it was February when I was there: they were taking about 1,000l. a day. This was a great advance on what had been done previously; but it implies only one ship of 2,000 tons through in the twenty-four hours. And is very far short of what is indispensable for completing and keeping up the works. This at present demands 3,000l. a day, or about 1,000,000l. a year. It seems imperative that, even if a few more inches are not added to the depth of water, the deep mid-channel should be widened.

The traffic is increasing so fast, and it is so certain, that all who can come this way will, that we may believe that the Company, whether the existing one, or some new company to which the existing one may be obliged to sell the concern, will somehow or other find the means for carrying out the necessary completions, and for maintaining the affair; but it is hard to believe that, even if every keel that cuts the Indian Ocean were, going and coming, to take this route, anything could remain over for dividend in the lifetime of the present shareholders; for even should a dividend be declared, the incredulous world will surmise that it is paid, not because there are net profits to justify it, but with a view to enabling the Company to raise loans needed for necessary completions, for which the revenue would be inadequate.

It is natural to ask of what advantage to Egypt is this Canal? We might answer, and perhaps rightly, that if the Isthmus had been divided by the wand of a magician, and the Canal thus made at the cost of a word, or of the waving of a hand, presented to the country, the advantage would not have been very considerable. But we will take things as they are: Suppose the case of the P. and O. boats. They have hitherto discharged everything at Suez, and at Alexandria; and their passengers and cargo have been carried across Egypt. We will suppose that the cost of this operation has been for each boat 1,000l. The whole of this 1,000l. has been left in Suez and Alexandria. It was so much toll paid to Egypt for so much work done in helping passengers and cargo through. But how would it stand with the same boats going through the Canal? We will suppose that they will pay precisely the same amount. But the question is, into whose hands will it go? Primarily to the account of the Company. If it should so happen that the concern has reached the point of paying dividends, a great portion will then be remitted to Europe for dividends. From that Egypt will derive no benefit; nor from that portion of the salaries of officials they may save, and remit to Europe; nor from what will be paid in Europe for materials, and machinery. The officials, too, being Europeans, and always in the end returning to Europe with their families, will not at all increase, or improve, the human capital, or human stock, of the country. In fact, Egypt would gain little except from the small amount of native population that would be brought into being to supply the food, and some of the other wants of the officials, and others employed on the Canal. Some of these latter also, being natives, must be reckoned as part of the gain accruing to Egypt. With these small exceptions, Egypt is no more benefited by English ships passing through the Canal, than it would be by a flock of wild geese flying over the Isthmus.