This engineer reported a difference of thirty feet, and as this would render it impossible to make a direct canal without locks, a scheme was projected for making use of a portion of the Nile, as in the olden time, and having a system of locks where the salt-water canal joined the river. But the chances of war interfered, as the French were compelled to evacuate Egypt before the plan had been reported.
Nothing more was done until 1846, when a mixed commission was appointed to investigate the matter. They exploded the old error of a difference of level, and showed that the height of the water on each side was so nearly the same as to make no appreciable difference. Further than to establish this fact, the commission did not go, except to draw up some elaborate plans, which never amounted to anything.
HOW THE CANAL WAS PLANNED AND DUG.
In 1855, a project was completed by M. de Lesseps, for a canal without locks, and this is the scheme which has been successfully carried out by the Suez Canal Company. Some of the details were changed, but none of them are of any serious consequence.
It would require too much space to record all the diplomatic and other negotiations that attended the inception of the scheme, and the various means adopted to secure the funds necessary for conducting the work. The financial part of it was quite as difficult as the labor of the engineers, and several times it looked as though the enterprise must be abandoned altogether. The whole capital required by the canal, from commencement to completion, was about seventeen million pounds sterling, or eighty-five millions of dollars!
The work of excavating was begun on the 25th of April, 1859, by a few laborers who dug a small ditch in the presence of M. de Lesseps and four directors of the company, on the spot selected for the Mediterranean mouth of the canal. Immediately after this working, encampments were established all along the line, and the enterprise was earnestly pushed. At first, the work was performed without any machinery. Men and donkeys were the active force, the former armed with shovels, and the latter having a couple of baskets hung across their backs.
A native would fill the baskets with sand and drive the donkey on. They proceeded to where the burden was to be deposited, and when they arrived there, the baskets were emptied, and the donkey was driven back for a fresh load.
But it was found that the removal from agriculture and their other usual employments of the men necessary for digging the canal, was a serious interference with the affairs of the country. Twenty thousand men were required every month, and the drain was found to be so great that, in 1863, the Khedive refused to furnish them.
Matters then came to a stand still, and the company set about replacing manual labor with machinery. Various machines were devised before success was reached, and the magnificent dredges were made, by which the canal was finished. What was at first thought to be a misfortune proved an advantage, as the dredges were far more economical than manual labor, and enabled the company to finish the work much sooner than would have been possible under the old plan.