The Suez Canal is not so much a triumph of engineering as a monument of successful enterprise and determination on the part of its great promoter, M. Lesseps, in the face of great difficulties. According to the original programme, the canal was to have been constructed by forced labour, supplied by the Viceroy. The unhappy peasantry of the country, called “fellahs,” were compelled to give their labour for a miserable pittance of rice. No doubt, in ancient times, when forced labour was in use, every peasant might cheerfully work, because it was for the general benefit to bring sweet water from the Nile to other dry and thirsty places in Egypt; but to be obliged to work at a waterway of salt, which was only to be of use to foreigners who passed through the country, could not be expected of human beings, and therefore the carrying out of the work was not unaccompanied by cruelties of the nature attending slave labour in other lands. This was one of the reasons why the late Lord Palmerston opposed the canal scheme, for the kind hearted statesman bore in mind the loss of health and life occasioned to poor Egyptians by this mode of labour, and the more so because it had been originally proposed that one of the conditions on which the French Company was to take up the project should be the execution of the work by free labour. In consequence, no doubt, of representations from free countries, the Porte was induced to put a veto on the employment of forced labour, and everyone thought that this would be the deathblow to the completion of the canal: but M. Lesseps did not give way to despair, and he since stated that if he had depended on the labours of the fellahs only, the difficulties of the work never could have been surmounted; and that, in fact, the successful prosecution of the work was owing to his having turned his attention to the mechanical contrivances used for dredging on the Thames and the Clyde, from which he obtained better results in half the time and at half the cost.
Fig. 125.—Dredges and Elevators at Work.
Fig. 126.—Map of the Suez Canal.
The dredges used in the construction of the canal were of a new description. They were wonderful mechanical contrivances, and but for them the canal would not have been finished. They were not the contrivance of M. Lesseps, but of one of the contractors, a distinguished engineer, who received his technical education in France but his practical experience in England. The use of the dredging machines was prepared for by digging out a rough trough by spade work, and as soon as it had been dug to the depth of from six feet to twelve feet, the water was let in. After the water had been let in, the steam dredges were floated down the stream, moored along the bank, and set to work. The dredges were of two kinds. The great couloirs consisted of a long, broad, flat bottomed barge, on which stood a huge framework of wood, supporting an endless chain of heavy iron buckets. The chain was turned by steam, and the height of the axle was shifted from time to time, so that the empty buckets, as they revolved round and round, should always strike the bottom of the canal at a fixed angle. As they were dragged over the soil they scooped up a quantity of mud and sand and water, and as each bucket reached its highest point in the round, it discharged its contents into a long iron pipe which ran out at right angles to the barge. The further extremity of this pipe stretched for some yards beyond the bank of the canal, and therefore, when the dredging was going on, there was a constant stream of liquid mud pouring from the pipe’s mouth upon the shore, and thus raising the height of the embankment. When the hollow scooped out by the buckets had reached the required depth, the dredge was moved to another place, and the same process was repeated over and over again. These stationary dredges, however, though very effective, required much time in moving, and the lighter work of the canal was chiefly effected by movable dredges of a smaller size. These machines were of the same construction as those described; the only difference was that the mud raised by their agency was not poured directly on shore by pipes attached to the dredges, but was emptied in the first instance into large barges moored alongside the dredge. These barges were divided into compartments, each of which contained a railway truck, and when the barge was filled it steered away to the bank, where an elevator was fixed. The trucks, filled with mud were raised by a crane worked by steam power, and placed upon inclined rails, attached to the elevator, which sloped upwards at an angle of 45 degrees towards the bank. They were then drawn up the rails by an endless rope, and as each truck reached the end of the rails its side fell open, the mud was shot out upon the bank, and the empty truck returned by another set of rails to the platform on which the elevator was placed, and was thence lowered into the barge to which it belonged. As the elevator could unload and re-load a barge much faster than the dredges could fill it with mud, each elevator was fed by half a dozen dredges, and thus the mud raised from the canal by several dredges was carted away without difficulty at one and the same time. As these floating dredges were much easier to shift than those encumbered by the long couloir pipes, the work of excavating the bed went on much more rapidly. But in places where there was any great mass of earth or sand to be removed, the large couloirs could scoop out a given volume in a shorter time.
The traveller who wishes to see the canal should go to France, and, embarking at the port of Marseilles, cross the Mediterranean Sea, and steam to Port Saïd, which is about 150 miles east of the port of Alexandria, where the isthmus is crossed by the railroad, and is used by travellers to India, being known as the “overland route.” And this railway conveys the mail to and from India, thus saving the great sea voyage round Africa and the Cape of Good Hope. Nevertheless, it involves two transhipments—from the steamer to the rail at Alexandria, and from the railway to the steamer at Suez.
Fig. 127.—Port Saïd, the Mediterranean entrance to the Suez Canal.
Let us notice in order the places passed by the traveller in going from Port Saïd to Suez and the Red Sea. The arrow (Fig. [126]) points in the direction of the compass, and shows that the canal runs very nearly from north to south. Port Saïd is the little town at the northern or Mediterranean entrance to the canal, situated on the flat sands at the entrance of the canal, and is built chiefly of wood, with straight wide streets and houses, and although it now contains several thousand inhabitants, before the making of the canal was begun one hundred people could hardly have been got together. The town contains nothing deserving of notice, and has a striking resemblance to the newly settled cities of America. But in it reside agents who represent numerous varied interests—administrative, financial, mercantile and political. It is provided with docks, basins, quays and warehouses, and has a harbour stretching out a couple of miles or so into the sea, for to that distance two piers, or rather breakwaters, run out.