To tell the history of the financial troubles which obstructed the scheme would be tedious to the reader. At last there was an International Commission appointed, which cost the Viceroy of Egypt £12,000, and yet no single member took a farthing for his services. The names are sufficient to prove with what care it had been selected. On the part of England, Messrs. Rendel and MacClean, both eminent engineers, with, for a sufficiently good reason, Commander Hewet of the East India Company’s service, who for twenty-seven years had been making surveys in the Red Sea and Indian Ocean. France gave two of her greatest engineers, Messrs. Renaud and Liessou: Austria, one [pg 111]of the greatest practical engineers in the world, M. de Negrelli; Italy, M. Paléocapa; Germany, the distinguished Privy Councillor Lentzé; Holland, the Chevalier Conrad; Spain, M. de Montesino. They reported entirely in favour of the route. A second International Congress followed. The Viceroy behaved so magnificently to the scientific gentlemen of all nations who composed the commission, that M. de Lesseps thanked him publicly for having received them almost as crowned heads. The Viceroy answered gracefully, “Are they not the crowned heads of science?”
MAP OF THE SUEZ CANAL.
At last the financial and political difficulties were overcome. In 1858, an office was opened in Paris, into which money flowed freely. Lesseps tells good-naturedly some little episodes which occurred. An old bald-headed priest entered, doubtless a man who had been formerly a soldier. “Oh! those English,” said he, “I am glad to be able to be revenged on them by taking shares in the Suez Canal.” Another said, “I wish to subscribe for ‘Le Chemin de Fer de l’Ile de Suède’ ” (The Island of Sweden Railway!) It was remarked to him that the scheme did not include a railway, and that Sweden is not an island. “That’s all the same to me,” he replied, “provided it be against the English, I subscribe.” Lord Palmerston, whose shade must feel uneasy in the neighbourhood of the Canal, could not have been more prejudiced. At Grenoble, a whole regiment of engineers—naturally men of intelligence and technical knowledge, clubbed together for shares. The matter was not settled by even [pg 112]the free inflow of money. The Viceroy had been so much annoyed by the opposition shown to the scheme, that it took a good deal of tact on the part of its promoter to make things run smoothly. For the first four years, Lesseps, in making the necessary international and financial arrangements, travelled 30,000 miles per annum.
At length the scheme emerged from fog to fact. The Viceroy had promised 20,000 Egyptian labourers, but in 1861 he begged to be let out of his engagement. He had to pay handsomely for the privilege. Although the men were paid higher than they had ever been before, their labour was cheap: it cost double or treble the amount to employ foreigners.
The Canal, in its course of a shade over 100 miles, passes through several salt marshes, “Les Petits Bassins des Lacs Amers,” in one of which a deposit of salt was found, seven miles long by five miles wide. It also passes through an extensive piece of water, Lake Menzaleh.
At Lake Menzaleh the banks are very slightly above the level of the Canal, and from the deck of a big steamer there is an unbounded view over a wide expanse of lake and morass studded with islets, and at times gay and brilliant with innumerable flocks of rosy pelicans, scarlet flamingoes, and snow-white spoonbills, geese, ducks, and other birds. The pelicans may be caught bodily from a boat, so clumsy are they in the water, without the expenditure of powder and shot. Indeed, the sportsman might do worse than visit the Canal, where, it is almost needless to state, the shooting is open to all. A traveller, who has recently passed through the Canal en route to India, writes that there are alligators also to be seen. The whole of the channel through Lake Menzaleh was almost entirely excavated with dredges. When it was necessary to remove some surface soil before there was water enough for the dredges to float, it was done by the natives of Lake Menzaleh, a hardy and peculiar race, quite at home in digging canals or building embankments. The following account shows their mode of proceeding:—“They place themselves in files across the channel. The men in the middle of the file have their feet and the lower part of their legs in the water. These men lean forward and take in their arms large clods of earth, which they have previously dug up below the water with a species of pickaxe called a fass, somewhat resembling a short, big hoe. The clods are passed from man to man to the bank, where other men stand with their backs turned, and their arms crossed behind them, so as to make a sort of primitive hod. As soon as each of these has had enough clods piled on his back, he walks off, bent almost double, to the further side of the bank, and there opening his arms, lets his load fall through to the ground. It is unnecessary to add that this original métier requires the absence of all clothing.”[90]
Into the channel thus dug the dredges were floated. One of the machines employed deserves special mention. The long couloir (duct) was an iron spout 230 feet long, five and a half wide, and two deep, by means of which a dredger working in the centre of the channel could discharge its contents beyond the bank, assisted by the water which was pumped into it. The work done by these long-spouted dredges has amounted to as much as 120,000 cubic yards a-piece of soil in a month. By all kinds of ingenious appliances invented for the special needs of the occasion, as much as 2,763,000 cubic yards of [pg 113]excavation were accomplished in a month. M. de Lesseps tells us that “were it placed in the Place Vendôme, it would fill the whole square, and rise five times higher than the surrounding houses.” It would cover the entire length and breadth of the Champs Elysées, and reach to the top of the trees on either side.
THE SUEZ CANAL: DREDGES AT WORK.