"Of course you all recognize the shore before you," he continued.
"There isn't much shore there, only a strip of sand, with water beyond it," added Mrs. Woolridge.
"What country is it?" asked Miss Blanche in a whisper to Louis, who had his mother on one side of him and the fair maiden on the other.
"Egypt," replied Louis, wondering that she did not know.
"The water you see is Lake Menzaleh," answered the captain. "It is not much of a lake, as Americans would look at it. It is a sort of lagoon, covering from five hundred to a thousand square miles, according to different authorities; but the inundation of the Nile makes varying areas of water. The Damietta branch of the great river empties into the sea about thirty miles to the west of us, and this lagoon covers the region between it and the Suez Canal.
"The lake is separated from the Mediterranean by a narrow strip of land, which you can see, through which are a number of openings, such as we find in the sand-spits along the shore of our own country. But unlike our inlets, they were formerly mouths of the Nile, or at least of streams connected with it; and all of them have names, as the Mendesian Mouth, the Tanitic, the Pelusian, and others.
"It is full of islands, on some of which are the remains of Roman towns. The average depth of the water is not more than three feet; but it abounds in fish, and it is the abode of vast flocks of aquatic birds, which are hunted by many English sportsmen, who camp out there to enjoy the shooting. The morass has been partially drained, which accounts for the low water in the lake at the present time; and undoubtedly it will all be above the ordinary level of the Nile at no very distant time.
"The Suez Canal extends in a perfectly straight line, north and south, through this lake and the low land around it. But we will not meddle with the canal just yet, for we shall have a great deal of time to talk about it while we are going through it; for it is a hundred miles long, and steamers are required to move very slowly, except in the lakes now forming part of it. As this canal is one of the most important enterprises ever carried through to a completion, I have asked Mr. Woolridge to give us an account of its construction and uses. Then I shall invite you to adjourn to the promenade deck, where I have prepared something more in relation to Egypt, the 'Land of Goshen.'
"This canal takes its name from the isthmus or city of that name, or the Red Sea; more properly from the former, as it makes its passage through it," Mr. Woolridge began. "Our old friend, Ramses II., of whom we have heard so much in the last four weeks, is said to have been the first to dig out a Suez Canal, though I cannot inform you by what name he called it in the Egyptian language; but that was a small affair compared with the one before us. But our friend's canal got filled up from the amount of mud and sand lying loose around here.
"Darius I. of Persia cleaned it out, though it was suffered to become useless again. Then the Mohammedan conquerors of Egypt opened it once more; but they lacked the modern facilities for handling mud and sand, and it went to ruin again, and was useless till a comparatively modern date.