The Isthmus of Suez Question

by Ferdinand de Lesseps

1st. To begin with, the direct track is only about one third the length of the other. That would be 400 kilometres long, and the direct track is only 155, which would be reduced to 120, as will be seen. Near about the middle of the Isthmus, the Bitter Lakes are met with, which give 18 kilometres of navigation ready made, and not requiring a single turn of the shovel, as the Viceroy’s engineers say, and 18 kilometres in addition are three parts excavated by nature itself; 120 kilometres therefore remain, that is to say, 30 leagues at the most.

2nd. The direct track is the easiest. There are only two salient points in the entire Isthmus that it is necessary to traverse by partly turning them; one, the Serapeum, which, according to the levels checked in 1853, is 16 met., 5950 high; and the other El Guisr, which is 11 met., 6300. With the depth of the Canal, this would make a cutting of 20 or at most 24 metres at some points. There is certainly nothing in such a work to terrify our engineers.

3rd. The direct track is the most natural. The Isthmus is traversed by a longitudinal depression, formed by the meeting of the two plains descending with an imperceptible slope, the one from Egypt, the other from the frontier hills of Asia. The Bitter Lakes, filled with the waters of the Arabian Gulf by the action of the tides only, may easily form a reservoir which, with a surface of 280,000,000 square metres by a rise of 2 metres of moving waters, would not receive less than 560,000,000 cubic metres, for the service of the Canal, below the water line at the level of the two Seas. Lake Timsah, situated at about an equal distance from Suez and Pelusium, is like an inland port where ships can be revictualled and repaired. Moreover, by another favour of nature, towards Lake Timsah a second not less remarkable hollow abuts perpendicularly on the longitudinal depression, it is that of the Wady-Tomilat (the fertile Goshen of the Bible). This hollow still receives the overflowings of the Nile for a great part of its length, and forms the natural track of a communication starting from the river and joining, at the central part of the Isthmus, the line of maritime navigation which would be established between the Arabian Gulf and the Mediterranean.

4th. The direct track is the most useful. It serves at the same time the interests of commerce in general and the political interests of Egypt and the Ottoman Empire. It will require but little to maintain it, and as there will be very few works of art, navigation will not be exposed to those interruptions which it would have to dread on the indirect track.

To these evident advantages of the direct track, to these relative facilities which had attracted the attention of the sovereigns of Egypt, of Amrou and Mustapha III. for example (see Lebeau, Histoire du Bas-Empire, tom. XII. p. 490, and the Mémoires du Baron de Tott sur les Turcs, pts. III. and IV.), before attracting that of the nineteenth century, there is but one objection, and it is this:—

It is impossible, they say, for large ships to approach Pelusium; and the direct Canal is chimerical, because it cannot open into the Mediterranean.

This oft-repeated objection is but specious, and cannot stand before an examination of the facts. The entrance to Pelusium is certainly a difficult and costly work, but it is perfectly practicable, and engineers have overcome very different obstacles with resources much inferior to those now at their command.

It is well in the first place that it should be known that the level of the two Seas, excepting the difference of the tides, which are pretty high at the south in the Red Sea, and almost nothing at the north in the Mediterranean, is perceptibly the same. The commission of 1799 had found for the Arabian Gulf an elevation of 9 met. 90; but its labours, performed in the midst of all the dangers and disturbances of war, had not been verified, and the genius of Laplace resting upon accurate theoretical views, had formally denied the possibility of such a depression within a distance of scarcely thirty leagues. Afterwards, towards 1840, some English officers had proved by the barometer and the boiling water process that there was no difference of level; and in 1843, Prince Metternich, having been informed of these labours, sent instructions to Egypt to induce Mehemet Ali to interest himself in the grand undertaking of the cutting of the Isthmus: his dispatch is still in the Archives of the Austrian Consulate at Alexandria. In 1847 a commission of French engineers, sent out by M. Paulin Talabot under the direction of the learned M. Bourdaloue, and assisted by Egyptian engineers directed by M. Linant, chief engineer to the Viceroy, put the fact beyond all question, and M. Paulin Talabot had the honour of stating it in a memorial that has become famous. Our Academy of Sciences bestirred itself for the honour of the ancient Egyptian commission. M. Sabatier, Consul general of France, asked the Viceroy for a fresh verification, which M. Linant was charged to undertake in 1853, and which confirmed, saying an insignificant variation, the labours of 1847.

So that the considerable super-elevation of the Red Sea cannot be reckoned on for facilitating the approaches from the Mediterranean at the other extremity of the Canal; there is only the difference of the tides.