WHERE THE ENDS OF THE WORLD ARE JOINED

New Zealand Listener, Volume 2, Issue 47, 17 May 1940, Page 9

WHERE THE ENDS OF THE WORLD ARE JOINED

The Suez Canal Through The Ages

the idea of cutting a canal between the Red Sea and the Mediterranean, there distant only seventy-five miles as the crow flies, was such an obvious and inviting one that it must have occurred to the earliest trader: and sailors in these seas, ; We have it on the venerable but not very safe authority of Aristotle, Strabo, and Pliny, that the work was first undertaken by Sesotris, a famous Pharaoh of the 12th Dynasty. This canal was eventually completed and was in constant use for a couple of centuries, but, some time before the beginning of the 7th century B.C., it became neglected and craduallyv silted up. In 612 B.C. Pharaoh Necho merest glance at a map will show that

(better known to us as the victor over Josiah, King of Judah, at the battle of Megiddo) undertook to recut it and employed over 100,000 slaves on the labour, but gave it up when warned by an oracle that he was preparing the way for an invader. Used by Romans Under the Romans, the canal, newly baptized "River of Trajan," was thoroughly. cleaned out, given a better water supply by the main stream of the Nile, and thus made safe for another couple of.centuries. But it again became derelict and, toward the close of the 3rd century A.D., it was out of use. After the Arab conquest of Egypt in the 7th century it was reopened by -its conqueror, Amr. Not for long though: re-

opened in the winter of 641-2, it was finally closed again in 776 by another caliph as a protective step against the incursions of insurgents from Mecca and Medina. And, for over a thousand years, the sands of the desert covered up the waterway. Napoleon Had the Idea Yet its utility was so obvious that the Venetians, the Turks, and the French in their turn toyed with the idea, but it never went further than the stage of reports and discussions. After the conquest of India by the British, they too entered the lists, and the Tivalry between them and the French became so keen that it resulted eventually in Napoleon’s expedition to Egypt in 1798. The famous architect, Lepére, attached to Napoleon’s expedition, like the engineers of Ptolemeus Philadelphus 2,000 years before, concluded against a direct canal as, according to him, the level of the Red Sea was over thirty feet higher than that of the Mediterranean. 19th-Century Rivalries Among the officers who fotght against Napoleon in these battles was a young Albanian, Mehemet Ali, who, by cunning and daring, was to make himself, in a very few years, the undisputed master of all Egypt. Engineers appointed by Mehemet Ali, principally Linant Bey and Mougel Bey, prepared detailed plans for the future waterway, doing away with the fallacy about the difference in levels and generally laying the ground for the work which was to be carried out by Ferdinand de Lesseps two decades later. De Lesseps Takes Charge And then, when the hour was ripe, there arose the man who was to bring all these diverging efforts to fruition: Ferdinand de Lesseps. With indomitable courage, perseverance, and practical sense, he combined imagination and a charm of manner which made him what was then most needed: the perfect

diplomat. On the accession of Said Pasha in 1854, he at once went to pay homage and, heartened by the warmth of his welcome, put his cherished project before the new Viceroy, who was straightway convinced that it could be carried out, and that his good friend Ferdinand was the man to do it. With unexpected readiness, the Concession for which the European powers had been wrangling for so long was granted to an individual; first, provisionally, on November 30, 1854, and then, formally and definitely, in January, 1856. Finding the Capital The first stage was to obtain the necessary capital for his Compagnie Universelle du Canal Maritime de Suez. The inimical attitude of the British Government, however, deterred the English public, and more than half the share of the initial capital of 200,000,000 gold francs (-£8 millions at pre-1914 rates) was subscribed ‘by the French, as much as a gesture of defiance and protest as for investment. Eventually, in 1860, Said Pasha himself was persuaded to take up the remaining unallotted shares. Work Begins In April, 1859, work was begun. The obvious line for the canal to take was indicated by the formation of the ground: a natural depression ran across the isthmus, the lowest part of this embryo canal being formed by the basin of the dried-up Bitter Lakes and at only a few points did the ground rise above sea-level. From the breakwater at Port Said the canal had to be carried to Kantara, the first point on the mainland, across a plain of liquid mud laid down by, the Nile. The difficulty of getting this mud to hold was laboriously overcome by the local natives who knew how to deal with it: they simply scooped up large

masses which they squeezed dry by pressing it against their chests. They then stacked up the lumps, letting each layer bake hard in the sun before adding another. This part of the canal accomplished, the only serious obstacle between them and Lake Timsah was a huge sandy plateau, El Guisr. Opponents of the scheme said that the sand: would surely engulf the workmen as they dug, but by 1861 the 9 mile channel through the plateau was, though by no means completed, at least passable, and Lake Timsah was reached. Later, after political and labour troubles, the work was allotted to several specialised sub-contractors, and from then on proceeded fairly smoothly, The contractor .who had undertaken to excavate the

Serapeum. plateau utilised the greater elevation of the freshwater canal over the megritime to introduce dredgers on to the plateau. These tactics overcame what had appeared a most formidable obstacle, and at last the canal reached the Bitter Lakes. Between these lakes and Suez, which owing to the freshwater canal and the construction of docks had grown from an insignificant Egyptian village into a busy port, rose only the Chalouf hill. Here a great mass of rock had to be cut into, and it was therefore the last part of the canal to be completed. Still Some Headaches There were, however, still headaches enough left for Ferdinand

de Lesseps: for one thing, the work turned out to be far more expensive than had been anticipated. De Lesseps had to barter away some of the privileges and rights conceded to his Company by the Egyptian Government against loans and ready cash. By November, 1869, the canal was ready for traffic. The first passage of a number of great ships through such a narrow channel was a_hazardous experiment, and 15 days before the opening the engineers found that they had missed a great boulder rising up 15 feet from the bottom of the Chalouf cut. De Lesseps sent for gunpowder from Cairo, vowing that something should blow up, either the rock or himself. The traffic was at first less than expected and, during the first two years, the receipts were therefore considerably lower than the expenses, so that the Company became dangerously near to bankruptcy. Fortunately for every one concerned, a comprdémise was arrived at, the traffic began gradually to increase, and in 1875, the Company was able to distribute a first, modest dividend. Disraeli’s Famous Deal It was in the same year that the famous deal*took place, which was to give Great Britain a paramount interest in the canal and to have, indirectly, farreaching consequences on her political relations with Egypt: on November 25 that year, Disraeli, on behalf of the British Government, bought the Khedive’s 176,602 shares of the Canal Company for 100,000,000 gold francs (£4 millions). Passage through the canal is now, of course, much quicker than it was at the time of the opening, when the total transit time was over 48. hours, including 17 hours of navigation and more than 30 hours of stops and moorings: the fastest transit time is at present slightly over 11 hours. The widening and deepening of the canal now allows ships of over 40,000 tons like the Empress of Britain to pass through unhindered, . ge

The Suez Canal is no new thing. The present waterway between the two ends of the world was opened in November, 1869, but this geographical crossway became a historical crossway centuries before the Birth of Christ. The story of the " jugular artery" of the British Empire is told in this condensation of an article by Rene Elvin in "The GéoSraphical Magazine":