A Fantasy of Mediterranean Travel

by Samuel G. Bayne

"On the great breakwater at Port Said stands the bronze statue of Ferdinand de Lesseps, his right hand extended in a gesture of invitation to the mariners of all nations to take their ships through the great canal which was the fruit of his genius and diplomacy. Not one word is there to indicate that his fortune and good name lie buried in the failure of another canal, half way round the world.

"The romance of the Suez Canal is suggested by everything the visitor sees at Port Said, the 'turnstile of the nations.' But the tragedy of the canal, the terrible cost of life, the shameful waste of money, the enslavement of the Egyptians in governmental and financial bondage, the wreck of French hopes and aspirations—not one hint of all that tragedy is discernible. Ferdinand de Lesseps, Ismail Pasha and the Egyptian people gave civilization and commerce one of its greatest gifts in the Suez Canal, but the cost to them was all they had—and they were never repaid.

"Every day in the year a dozen great ships make the procession through the canal—the ninety miles of slow travelling which saves them the cost of circumnavigating the great continent of Africa. They pay well for it, and the owners of the canal shares wax fat. England controls the canal, the construction of which John Bull attempted in every manner to prevent. English ships bound from "home" to Bombay cut down the distance from 10,860 miles to 4,620 miles by taking the canal route, and the vast majority of ships which pay tolls to the canal company fly the British flag. Germany comes second, a long way after; Holland third, and the French, whose dreams of commercial empire cut the ditch, are fourth. The United States has not been represented in the canal in a decade by any commercial ship—only vessels of the navy and yachts of the Yankee millionaires show the Stars and Stripes to the Bedouins of the desert who bring their caravans from Mt. Sinai to the canal."

MOST IMPORTANT OF CANALS

"The tonnage of the Suez is not one-third as great as that of the Sault Ste. Marie Canal in the Great Lakes, but its importance to the commerce of the world is greater than that of any other passageway of the seas. Wherever there is a strait or a narrow passage through which commerce may go, there is sure to be a British flag flying, a British band playing, and a red-coated Tommy Atkins strutting about with a swagger stick. Suez is not an exception.

"Fourteen centuries before Christ, nearly 3,500 years ago, the Pharaoh Setee I., father of Rameses the Great, cut a canal fifty-seven miles long from a branch of the Nile delta to the bitter lakes, which are now part of the Suez Canal and which were then the northern extremity of the Gulf of Suez. That connected the Mediterranean with the Red Sea, and Egypt waxed great. But the nation decayed, and the sands of the desert filled up the ditch. Eight hundred years later the Pharaoh Necho undertook to dig the canal. More than a hundred thousand lives were sacrificed to the project, but it was abandoned when a priest predicted that its completion would cause Egypt to fall into the hands of a foreign usurper. A hundred years after Necho, the Persian Darius took up the work on the abandoned canal, but his engineers told him that its completion would cause a deluge, and he desisted. About three hundred years before Christ was born, Ptolemy Philadelphus constructed a lock-and-dam canal through which ships made the journey from one of the mouths of the Nile to the site of modern Suez. Continued wars interrupted commerce, and the locks and dams fell into decay, so that Cleopatra's navy was unable to escape to the Red Sea by canal. The Roman engineers later patched up the canal so that their galleys made their way from sea to sea; but when the Arabs came in A.D. 700 they found it choked up. Amrou, the Arab, cleared it out, but it was soon permitted to fill up again, and not until the great Napoleon reached Egypt was the canal project again considered. Napoleon abandoned the idea only because his engineers assured him that the level of the Mediterranean was thirty feet below that of the Red Sea. He then considered a lock-and-dam canal, but he evacuated Egypt before anything came of it. Of course, all those ancient canals were very narrow and shallow, and no boat now dignified with the business of carrying cargo for profit could have entered any one of them."

MEHEMET ALI WAS WARY

"Mehemet Ali, the great pasha who founded the present Egyptian khedivate, was urged to attempt the canal project, but he was wary. At last he pushed it aside, and listened to the Englishman, Robert Stephenson—the father of the railroad. Under Stephenson's supervision he built a railroad from Cairo to Suez, connecting with the line from Cairo to Alexandria. This formed the "great overland route" to India, and brought great trade and many rich tolls to the Egyptians.

"The time came when Said Pasha ruled in Cairo. To him came Ferdinand de Lesseps. Years before, while a clerk in the French consulate general in Cairo, De Lesseps dreamed the dream of the great canal. He was not an engineer, but he was a master diplomatist. He unfolded his plans to Said, who loved France and all Frenchmen, and met with encouragement. It was a magnificent scheme. The canal was not to cost Egypt one cent, but was to pay fifteen per cent. of its receipts to the Egyptian government, and at the expiration of ninety-nine years was to become the absolute property of Egypt. On such terms the concession was given to De Lesseps in 1856.

"Then De Lesseps went forth to get the money. France had just come out of the Crimean War and could not advance money for ventures. England was opposed to a canal that would let anybody have a chance at India, and the English government did everything possible to prevent the Frenchman from obtaining funds. He failed in Europe, for he could not get enough even for a survey of the canal. Nothing daunted, he went back to Egypt and borrowed money enough from Said to survey the canal and to exploit it through Europe. Then came much planning and more concessions, and much stock jobbing; but by 1860 the French company was again without money. Again the appeal was made to Said, and not without avail; for he subscribed for more than one-third or the total capital stock and promised to advance money for the construction work—and all for a project that was not to cost Egypt anything. That was the beginning of Egypt's bondage to the money lenders of Europe, for Said had to borrow the money he gave to the canal."