The Suez Canal.

Auckland Star, Volume XXI, Issue 259, 1 November 1890, Page 4 (Supplement)

The Suez Canal.

The Suez Canal is the work of one great man, and ibs 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, nob by a professional engineer, bub by a mere consular clerk, and was executed in spite of the most determined opposition of polibicians and capitalists,and in the teeth of bhe mockery and ridicule of practical engineers, who affected to sneer at the scheme aa the chimerical dream of a vainglorious Frenchman. The canal, looked ab from a purely picturesque standpoint, does not present audi striking features as obher great monuments of engineering skill—the Forth Bridge, the Mount Cenis Tunnel, or the great railway which Bcales the highest peaks of the Rocky Mountains. This ' huge ditch,' as ib has been contemptuously called, ' has not indeed been carried over high mountains, nor cub 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 haa 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 fco those of imaginative temperament there are elements of romance aboub this greab enberprise. It is the creation of a nineteenth-century wizard with bis enchanter's wand— the spade—has transformed the shape of the globe, and summoned the eea to flow uninterrupted from the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean. Then, too, the most matter-of-fact traveller who traverses ib can hardly fail to be impressed with the genius loci. Every mile of tbe canal passes through a region enriched by the memories of events which had their birth in the remotest ages of antiquity. Across bhis plain 4,000 years ago Abraham wandered from far-away Ur of tbe Cbaldees. Beyond the placid waters of Lake Menzaleh lie the ruins of Zoan, where Moses performed his miracles. On tho right lies the plain of Pelusium, across which Rameaes 11. 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 pasaing through the canal ab night—the electric light seeming as a pillar of fire to the steamer aa it swiftly but silently ploughs its course through the desert—bhe strangre impressivenesa of the scene ia intensified. ' The canal links together in sweeping contrast the great Past and the greater Presenb, pointing to a future which we are as little able to divine as were the Pharaohs and Ptolemies of old to forecast the wonders of tbe nineteenth century.'— From ' The Picturesque Mediterranean.'