Reminiscences of Travel in Australia, America, and Egypt

by Sir Richard Tangye

Many suggestions as to the reopening of the waterway have been made in almost every generation since. Bonaparte, during his expedition to Egypt in 1798, even caused the preliminary works to be undertaken. His chief engineer surveyed the ground, but, owing to a serious miscalculation, threw great doubt on the possibility of carrying out the work. He estimated the level of the Red Sea to be nearly 33ft. higher than that of the Mediterranean, an idea that Leibnitz ridiculed nearly a century before. Vigorous protests against Lepère’s theory were not wanting, but it was, nevertheless, sufficient to cause the abandonment of the scheme until Monsieur Lesseps directed his attention to the matter. On his appointment as an Attaché to the French Mission, Lesseps had to undergo a lengthy quarantine at Alexandria; here he was supplied with books by his Consul, among them being Lepère’s memoirs respecting the scheme for connecting the two seas, the effect of which upon the young Frenchman’s mind was never effaced.

In 1847 a Commission of Engineers demonstrated the inaccuracy of Lepère’s observations, and proved that the level of the two seas was practically the same. In 1854 Lesseps having matured his plan laid it before the Viceroy, who determined to carry it out. Palmerston, then premier, did his utmost, from political motives, to thwart the enterprise; but early in 1856 permission was given to commence the work.

Considerable difficulty was experienced in raising the capital, but on the 25th April, 1858, operations were actually begun. The Viceroy undertook to pay many of the current expenses, and provided 25,000 workmen, who were to be paid and fed by the Company at an inexpensive rate, and were to be relieved every three months. In order to provide these men with water 4,000 casks suitable for being carried on camels had to be made, and 1,600 of these animals were daily employed in bringing supplies, at a cost of £320 per day.

At the end of December, 1863, the Fresh Water Canal was completed, by which the Company was relieved of the enormous expense of supplying the workmen with water.

On the 18th March, 1869, the water of the Mediterranean was allowed to flow into the nearly dry salt-incrusted basins of the Bitter Lakes, some parts of which lay forty feet below the level of the Mediterranean, while others required extensive dredging operations. The Bitter Lakes have been identified with the Marah of the Bible (Exodus xv., 23—“And when they came to Marah, they could not drink of the waters of Marah for they were bitter”). The captain of our vessel informed me that in these lakes the saltness, and consequently the density, of the water is such as to cause the vessel to rise five inches above the ordinary waterline.

The cost of constructing the Canal amounted to about £19,000,000, more than a third of which was contributed by the Khedive. The original capital of the company in 400,000 shares amounted to £8,000,000, the difference being raised by loans payable at fixed intervals, and adding an annual burden to the scheme of £451,000. The festivities connected with the opening of the Canal in 1869 cost the Khedive—that is to say the taxpayer of Egypt—£14,200,000, or more than half the total capital!

The great mercantile importance of the Canal is apparent from the following data:—Between London and Bombay forty-four per cent. of the distance is saved by through-going ships; between London and Hong Kong twenty-eight per cent., and between Marseilles and Bombay fifty-nine per cent. Over eighty per cent. of the trade passing through the Canal is done in British vessels, and in 1875—or six years after the Canal was opened—the English traffic was equal to twelve times that of the French.

In 1870, 486 steamers, representing 493,911 tons, passed through the canal, and in 1882 these figures had risen to 3,198 steamers with 7,125,000 tons. (Baedeker).

From Port Saïd the Canal runs in a nearly straight line to Kantara (a mere group of sheds), its course lying across the shallow lagoon-like Lake Menzaleh, which has an average depth of only three feet. The embankments are low, irregular sand-banks, formed of the dredged material, and having at the margin of the water a coarse growth of straggling sedgy-looking vegetation. After passing Kantara, the Balah Lakes are reached, and the course is marked out in their open surface by a double line of buoys. Then the most difficult portion of the original work is reached—viz., the cutting of El Guisr, which is six miles long, the depth from ground-level to surface of water being about forty-five feet. This is by far the highest land in the Isthmus. Leaving the El Guisr cutting, the open waters of Lake Timsah, (Crocodile Lake) are reached, and far away across its blue mirror-like surface stretches the double line of buoys, marking out the track. On the northern shore of the lake, buried in a delightful mass of vegetation, lies the French town of Ismailïa, once the great centre from which operations during the construction of the Canal were conducted, and now one of the principal stations whence its navigation is controlled by means of telegraph. Lake Timsah has an area of some six or seven square miles, and the huge fleet of war vessels, transports, and tenders which Lord Wolseley used as a base for his operations in the late campaign lay there without difficulty. From Lake Timsah the Suez Canal holds a roughly parallel course with the Freshwater Canal and the Suez line of railway, and passes through a long cutting into the Bitter Lakes, an extremely tame and uninteresting sheet of water some fifteen miles long, with flat, low, sandy banks, and thence into another long cutting—some twenty-six feet deep at Shalouf—after which the flat sandy plains of Suez are traversed, and the head of the gulf reached.

The impression is general that the Suez Canal is cut through immense deposits of sand, or sand and water, but this is quite erroneous. The desert, it is true, is sandy and sterile, but the sand is quite superficial, covering a gypseous clay, not at all difficult to work in. From Balah to the Bitter Lakes there is fine muddy sand, with clay at intervals, and at Serapeum a rocky barrier. From the Bitter Lakes to Suez, however, there is a good clay, with limestone at Shalouf. The sinuosities in the Canal are such as to render the passage of vessels over 400 feet long somewhat difficult. It was expected that these curves would prevent the washing away of the banks, but it is doubtful whether they have at all contributed to the preservation of the sandy embankments. Indeed, most of the predictions of the early destruction of the Canal by the operation of natural causes have been proved to be as ill-founded as such predictions generally are. The banks have no ill-regulated propensity for crumbling away. The Canal is not in perpetual and imminent danger of being silted-up. The enormous and costly dredging operations that were to swallow more than the revenue of the undertaking are unknown, and the sole matter for regret is that the Canal was not made as wide again as it is, for the accommodation of the vast traffic it has created. Among the many confident prophesies made by professional engineers of the day, one stands recorded in the technical papers to the effect that every vessel must necessarily be towed through the Canal, the explanation being that the regulation speed of five miles per hour was not sufficient to afford steering “way”; hence, said the prophet, the slightest wind across the line of the Canal must infallibly blow ashore any vessel whose commander should have the temerity to attempt to steam between the two seas. Experience, however, has shown that the largest vessels are under perfect command when propelled by their own engines.