[158] It was expected that the Great Eastern steamship would attain a speed of 25 knots an hour, and the proposition that a vessel’s speed is almost in the direct ratio to her length having once been granted, that a class of vessels would come to be built that would be too large to make use of the canal.
[159] ‘Edinburgh Review,’ vol. ciii. (January 1856).
[160] This seems an extraordinary assumption when we consider that the canal saves in the journey to Bombay 41 per cent. of the voyage by the Cape, and on the journey to Madras and Calcutta 32 to 35 per cent.
[161] In 1887 the average duration of the passage through the canal for the whole 3137 ships that made use of it was 34 hours 3 minutes. Between 1870 and 1873 the passage was frequently effected in 12 to 15 hours.
[162] The shares rose from a middle price of 306 francs in 1867 to 664 in 1877, 1021 in 1880, 2710 in 1882, and fell to 1989 in 1884, rising again to 2095 in 1886.
[163] The distance from Suedia to Kalah Jabar, a small Arab settlement on the Euphrates, was put down at 100 to 150 miles, and the river journey from Kalah Jabar to Bussora at 715 miles. From Bussora to Kurrachee the distance is 1000 miles. The average time occupied in descending the Tigris was taken at seven days, and that of the ascent at twelve.
[164] M. Emile Ende, in a communication to the French Academy of Sciences in 1886.