The sandy plains in the vicinity of the town are, however, full of interest to the historian and archæologist. Here may be found ruins and remains of antiquity which recall a period of civilization reaching back more centuries than Port Said (built in 1859) does years. The ruins of Pelusium (the Sin of the Old Testament), the key of Northeastern Egypt in the Pharaonic period, are only eighteen miles distant, and along the shore may still be traced a few vestiges of the great highway—the oldest road in the world of which remains exist—constructed by Rameses II., in 1350 B. C., when he undertook his expedition for the conquest of Syria.
To come to more recent history. It was on the Pelusiac shores that Cambyses defeated the Egyptians, and here some five centuries later Pompey the Great was treacherously murdered when he fled to Egypt, after the Battle of Pharsalia.
To the southwest of Port Said, close to the wretched little fishing village of Sais, situated on the southern shore of Lake Menzaleh, are the magnificent ruins of Tanis (the Zoan of the Old Testament). These seldom visited remains are only second to those of Thebes in historical and archæological interest. It is a little curious that while tourists flock in crowds to distant Thebes and Karnak, few take the trouble to visit the easily accessible ruins of Tanis. The ruins were uncovered at great cost of labor by the late Mariette Bey, and in the great temple were unearthed some of the most notable monuments of the Pharaohs, including over a dozen gigantic fallen obelisks—a larger number than any Theban temple contains. This vast building, restored and enlarged by Rameses II., goes back to over five thousand years. As Thebes declined Tanis rose in importance, and under the kings of the Twenty-first Dynasty it became the chief seat of Government. Mr. John Macgregor (Rob Roy), who was one of the first of modern travellers to call attention to these grand ruins, declares that of all the celebrated remains he had seen none impressed him “so deeply with the sense of fallen and deserted magnificence” as the ruined temple of Tanis.
The Suez Canal is admittedly one of the greatest undertakings of modern times, and has perhaps effected a greater transformation in the world’s commerce, during the thirty years that have elapsed since its completion, than has been effected in the same period by the agency of steam. It was emphatically the work of one man, and of one, too, who was devoid of the slightest technical training in the engineering profession. Monsieur de Lesseps cannot, of course, claim any originality in the conception of this great undertaking, for the idea of opening up communication between the Mediterranean and the Red Sea by means of a maritime canal is almost as old as Egypt itself, and many attempts were made by the rulers of Egypt from Sesostris downwards to span the Isthmus with “a bridge of water.” Most of these projects proved abortive, though there was some kind of water communication between the two seas in the time of the Ptolemies, and it was by this canal that Cleopatra attempted to escape after the battle of Actium. When Napoleon the Great occupied Egypt, he went so far as to appoint a commission of engineers to examine into a projected scheme for a maritime canal, but owing to the ignorance of the commissioners, who reported that there was a difference of thirty feet in the levels of the two seas—though there is really scarcely more than six inches—which would necessitate vast locks, and involve enormous outlay of money, the plan was given up.
The Suez Canal is, in short, the work of one great man, and its existence is due to the undaunted courage, the indomitable energy, to the intensity of conviction, and to the magnetic personality of M. de Lesseps, which influenced everyone with whom he came in contact, from Viceroy down to the humblest fellah. This great project was carried out, too, not by a professional engineer, but by a mere consular clerk, and was executed in spite of the most determined opposition of politicians and capitalists, and in the teeth of the mockery and ridicule of practical engineers, who affected to sneer at the scheme as the chimerical dream of a vainglorious Frenchman.
The Canal, looked at from a purely picturesque standpoint, does not present such striking features as other great monuments of engineering skill—the Forth Bridge, the Mont Cenis Tunnel, or the great railway which scales the highest peaks of the Rocky Mountains. This “huge ditch,” as it has been contemptuously called, “has not indeed been carried over high mountains, nor cut through rock-bound tunnels, nor have its waters been confined by Titanic masses of masonry.” In fact, technically speaking, the name canal as applied to this channel is a misnomer. It has nothing in common with other canals—no locks, gates, reservoirs, nor pumping engines. It is really an artificial strait, or a prolongation of an arm of the sea. We can freely concede this, yet to those of imaginative temperament there are elements of romance about this great enterprise. It is the creation of a nineteenth-century wizard who, with his enchanter’s wand—the spade—has transformed the shape of the globe, and summoned the sea to flow uninterruptedly from the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean. Then, too, the most matter-of-fact traveller who traverses it can hardly fail to be impressed with the genius loci. Every mile of the Canal passes through a region enriched by the memories of events which had their birth in the remotest ages of antiquity. Across this plain four thousand years ago Abraham wandered from far-away Ur of the Chaldees. Beyond the placid waters of Lake Menzaleh lie the ruins of Zoan, where Moses performed his miracles. On the right lies the plain of Pelusium, across which Rameses II. led his great expedition for the conquest of Syria; and across this sandy highway the hosts of Persian, Greek, and Roman conquerors successively swept to take possession of the riches of Egypt. In passing through the Canal at night—the electric light seeming as a pillar of fire to the steamer, as it swiftly, but silently, ploughs its course through the desert—the strange impressiveness of the scene is intensified. “The Canal links together in sweeping contrast the great Past and the greater Present, pointing to a future which we are as little able to divine, as were the Pharaohs or Ptolemies of old to forecast the wonders of the twentieth century.”
XII
MALTA