APPENDIX.
No. VII.
OPINION OF MR. ANDERSON.
OPINION OF MR ANDERSON.[5]
The interest which has recently been manifested in the improvement of our means of communication with India, China, &c. viâ Egypt and the Red Sea, seems to have revived the speculations, first broached during the occupation of Egypt by the French forces under Napoleon, as to the feasibility of opening a communication between the Red Sea and the Mediterranean by a Canal through the Isthmus of Suez.
Various statements upon this subject have lately appeared in the newspapers and periodicals, both of this country and the Continent, and a kind of prospectus proposing the formation of a Company to execute the undertaking, has just been put in circulation in London.
These statements and speculations, in so far as they have come under the cognizance of the writer of the following pages, are, in a great measure, superficial, crude, or erroneous,[6] and, therefore, calculated to mislead rather than inform the public in regard to the practicability and utility of an enterprise, whose importance it is scarcely possible to overrate, considering the nature and magnitude of the interests which would be involved in its successful accomplishment.
The writer has had the means of obtaining information relative to this matter, which he considers may be relied on, and having devoted much of his attention to this Canal question, he deems the present time opportune for submitting to the public some facts and observations tending, he ventures to believe, to lead to more correct conclusions on this very interesting subject than any which have as yet been published.
These facts and observations will be found arranged under the following heads:—
1.—The physical practicability of the enterprise.