Thus the geological record is in harmony with the traditions of the Priests as handed down to us by Herodotus, “Egypt is a gift of the Nile.” Within historic times, the elevating movement has been inappreciable. The Nile still continues to roll down its plenteous bounty of sand, and to spread unceasingly its desolating influence over the plains of Suez and along the coast of Egypt as far as Syria.
Capt. Pratt, in the Medina, made a careful survey of the coast, sounding and dredging with sufficient minuteness to determine the limit of Nile influence. Within this limit, the bottom was found to be composed of siliceous sands, differing in no respect from the sands of the desert about the Pyramids. Outside of the Nile sand, the bottom of the sea was found to be composed exclusively of calcareous particles. The suspended matter, which is greatest during the Nile floods, driven eastward along the coast, accumulates upon the beach in the form of dunes, and overwhelms the huts of the coast guard and the fishermen, and, in twelve months, nearly buried the Mosque of Brulos. Commencing its devastating march, it advances irresistibly toward Suez.
The Nile brings down a prodigious quantity of sand, which is swept into the river by the Libyan winds, and borne by the current to the sea, mingled with fragments of pottery from the villages on the banks. The quantity of sand brought into the sea has excited the astonishment of the most experienced students of delta formations. The Ganges, the Indus, the Dneipper, the Danube, and the Mississippi, the Yang-Tse-Kiang, and the Hoang Ho bring down annually millions of tons of solid matter to add to the accretions at their mouths.
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The whole amount carried yearly into the Gulf of Mexico by all the passes of the Mississippi is seven hundred and fifty millions of cubic feet, or a mass of one mile square and twenty-seven feet thick. “As the cubical contents of the whole mass of the bar at the South-west pass is equal to a solid of one mile square and four hundred and ninety feet thick, it would require fifty-five years to form the bar as it now exists.”[3]
Since the time of Strabo the Nile has advanced the coast line of Egypt, by its yearly contributions of sand, from four to six miles into the sea. Any interruptions of the littoral currents greatly accelerates this result. Such is the well-known effect of jetties and moles. Since the construction of the mole at Port Said, the shore line has advanced 1213 feet in eight years. Eighty-eight feet of this distance was made in the last six months. “If the shore line continues to advance,” Mr. Mitchell remarks, “at any thing like its present rate, the dry land will extend to the end of the mole in forty years. The shoaling of the entrance to the harbor will keep pace with the advance of the shore line, and before the end of twenty years an extension of the mole will be necessary.”
The silting up of the interior of the harbor by the sand which sifts through the interstices of the concrete block is regarded by Mr. Mitchell as a more serious evil. But as it may not be impracticable to close these interstices, this danger does not seem comparable to that which must arise from the unceasing eastward movement of the sands brought down by the Nile. It was for this reason that Alexander placed his city to the west of the mouth of the Nile.
The boldness and skill displayed in the construction of the harbor of Port Said may be appreciated from these facts. The excavation of the canal presented comparatively little difficulty. The entire cost of the canal and harbors was about forty-three and a half millions of dollars, or more than half of the entire cost of the work, which includes the expenses of hospitals, negotiations, surveys, machinery, and the miscellaneous expenses of administration, amounting in the aggregate to $80,893,665.