Suez Canal

“ Consequently all Asiatic Ports north of Singapore are within the attraction of the American Canal for United States commerce. The immense trade of these ports is an important factor. In Australia, all ports East of and including Melbourne are much nearer New York than via Suez. New Zealand, the coasts of North and South America on both oceans and all Pacific Ocean Island groups the same. No claim to important diversion from the Suez Canal can be made, as the distance from the United States to Port Said protects it. Nor is a claim to diversion from Suez Canal needed. ”

“ Great Britain is the preponderating user of the canal, with Germany a poor second. Holland, due to proprietorship of Dutch India, is third in the list, and the nation of De Lesseps is fourth. The United States stands near the foot of the roll of patrons, being only represented by an occasional warship, transport going to or coming from the Philippines, or a touring yacht. It is a pathetic fact that our country, paramount producer of the world, has not been represented for nearly a decade by the Stars and Stripes over a commercial craft in the Suez canal. ”

“ The Suez Canal is 87 m. long, 66 actual canal and 21 lakes. It has sufficient depth to allow vessels drawing 27 ft. of water to pass through. It is administered by a company whose headquarters are in Paris, and no part of its revenue reaches the Egyptian exchequer (see Suez Canal) . Besides the many steamship lines which use the Suez Canal, other steamers run direct from European ports to Alexandria. There is also a direct mail service between Suez and Port Sudan.
The chief means of internal communication are, in the Delta the railways, in Upper Egypt the railway and the river. ”

“ The Suez canal probably pays, and no wonder, cause they charge what they please to boats that go through, and if they don't pay all they have to do is to stay out, and go around a few thousand miles. It is like a ferry across a little stream out west, where there is no other way to cross, except to wade or go around, and the old ferryman sizes up the wagon load that wants to cross, and takes all they have got loose, and then the travelers are ahead of the game, cause if they didn't cross the stream they would have to camp on the bank until the stream dried up. ”

“ Within the last year a great commercial revolution has been effected through the opening of one of the ancient gates of the Me­di­ter­ra­nean, and the Suez Canal has become the great highway of steamers between Western Europe, the Indies, and Australia. Possibly, at no distant future, a similar canal will enable our merchantmen to proceed from the Black Sea to the Caspian, and perhaps even to the Amu and the Syr, in the very heart of the ancient continent. ”

“ The next improvement was the [Pg 144] substitution of a railway for “The Ship of the Desert,” in 1858, and the transmission of the English mails to Brindisi instead of Marseilles, and finally, the construction of the Suez Canal by Ferdinand Lesseps, the French engineer, at a cost of sixty million dollars. The canal is ninety-nine miles long with a width of 327 feet for 77 miles and 196 feet for the remaining 22 miles; the depth was originally twenty-six feet throughout, but the canal is undergoing progressive enlargement and deepening. ”

“ Many people believe that the opening of the Suez Canal has caused this diminution of our distributing trade, and it cannot be denied that the Suez Canal has done much to divert Oriental trade from this country, and to send goods direct through the Canal to the continental ports, where they are consumed, or where they can be placed on railways and be forwarded without break of bulk to their destinations. ”

“ The total length of quays at Port Said is over 3 miles. The inner port has an area of 130 acres, and the outer port an area of over 4000 acres. There are, besides, 120 acres of docks, and 10 acres of channel. [257] Port Said has now a permanent population of over 17,000, and Suez one of 11,000, whereas the total population of the Isthmus in 1859 was only 150 inhabitants.
The Suez Canal can boast of having achieved many triumphs. It has abridged time and space in a way and to an extent that no other enterprise has ever before done in the history of the world. ”

“ After completing the Suez Canal and thus uniting the world's greatest seas, the French people believed they could dig across the Isthmus of Panama, but digging through Culebra Cut thousands of miles from home was much different from digging across the level plain of Suez only a few hundred miles away. A canal without locks is entirely different from one where great ocean liners must be lifted eighty-five feet above sea level. ”

“ In a few years ancient Suez will be no more. The bazars are not so full of filth and flies, now that pilgrims pass straight through and hardly even encamp. The sweet water Canal renders a Hammam possible; coffee is no longer hot saltish water, and presently irrigation will cover with fields and gardens the desert plain extending to the feet of Jabal Atakah. The noble works of the Canal Maritime, which should in justice be called the "Lesseps Canal," shall soon transform Clysma into a modern and civilised city. ”

“ Probably no other highway of commerce since the discovery of the Cape route around Africa has caused such a great change and readjustment of trade between Europe and Asia as the Suez Canal. Sailing-vessels still take the Cape route, because the heavy towage tolls through the canal more than offset the gain in time. Steamships have their own power and generally take the canal route, thereby saving about ten days in time and fuel, and about four thousand eight hundred miles in distance. In spite of the heavy tolls the saving is considerable. ”

“ SUEZ CANAL. Before the construction of the Suez Canal there was no direct water communication between the Mediterranean and the Red Sea, but at various eras such communication existed by way of the Nile. Trade between Egypt and countries to the east was originally overland to ports south of the Gulf of Suez; the proximity of the roadstead at the head of that gulf to Memphis and the Delta nevertheless marked it as the natural outlet for the Red Sea commerce of Lower Egypt. ”

“ It will, indeed, be not surprising to see the Suez Canal tonnage increase, for trade breeds trade, and the Panama Canal will be a stimulant as well as a competitor. To all of British India and Southern China the distance from Liverpool via Suez is less than via Panama, and to Melbourne, Sidney and other Australian ports the saving in distance via Panama is less than 2000 miles. The Suez Canal, [375] it is to be remembered, is owned by Great Britain and a very slight concession in rates will be all that is needed to keep British merchant vessels to their long accustomed routes. ”

“ It is the belief of those interested in the construction of this great canal that there is no economy in cheap construction. Good results may only be obtained by good work. The Suez Canal, for example, is cheaply constructed; it is only 72 feet wide at the bottom, and large ships may pass one another only when one goes into a sort of siding, where it usually runs aground. The expense of getting ships out of the sand, since the traffic was first opened through the canal, has far surpassed the sum for which the canal could have been constructed so as to avoid such delays and accidents. ”

“ Ferdinand de Lesseps, Ismail Pasha and the Egyptian people gave civilization and commerce one of its greatest gifts in the Suez Canal, but the cost to them was all they had—and they were never repaid.
"Every day in the year a dozen great ships make the procession through the canal—the ninety miles of slow travelling which saves them the cost of circumnavigating the great continent of Africa. They pay well for it, and the owners of the canal shares wax fat. England controls the canal, the construction of which John Bull attempted in every manner to prevent. ”

“ The gigantic labors of the Suez Canal in removing the immense accumulations of sand, so often amassed as if to preserve the past history of the world, have not revealed a single vestige of uncivilized men who, before the deluge, were scattered over the rest of the earth. ”

“ We were directed to proceed to China through the Mediterranean, passing through the Suez Canal, although it was considered doubtful whether a ship of the size of the Audacious could get through the Canal [51] as it then was. And, indeed, it was a job of some dimensions! On arrival at Port Said the ship was lightened of all the coal and stores that we could spare and we proceeded on our course through the Canal, provided with one tug ahead and two tugs astern, to keep her straight. Anything less straight than our course it is difficult to imagine. ”

“ Although the difficulties that beset the canal diggers were such as engineers never before encountered, they were met and brushed aside, and all the world's engineering records were smashed into smithereens. It required 20 years to build the Suez Canal, through a comparatively dry and sandy region. When the work at Panama was at its height the United States was excavating the equivalent of a Suez Canal every 15 months. Likewise it required many years to complete the Manchester Ship Canal between Liverpool and Manchester, a distance of 35 miles. ”

“ The traffic of the Suez Canal has developed more rapidly than its constructors expected. Without the aid of tugs, sailing vessels are unable to navigate the Red Sea in either direction, either against the northern winds or against those from the south blowing directly into the gulf. But for the Indian traffic sails lave been superseded by steam; ships of a special build have even been constructed ”

“ The steamers touching at Alexandria form but a small part of those that use the Suez Canal; the traffic through that artificial highway has steadily increased, from year to year, until it now amounts to 120 ships a month, or four per day. Nearly all the craft that pass through the Canal are steamers, as it has not been found profitable for sailing ships to make the voyage up or down the Red Sea, with its treacherous winds and dangerous navigation. ”

“ I deny that it will be much more expensive to operate than the Suez Canal, which needs constant dredging to keep it from filling with desert sands, as against the nominal cost of operating modern locks at Nicaragua, proof of which we have in the cost of lockage at the Saint Mary's Canal, which now passes through its locks nearly three times the tonnage that uses the Suez Canal. ”

“ All mankind has heard much of M. Lesseps and his Suez canal. On that matter I do not mean to say much here. I have a very strong opinion that such canal will not and cannot be made; that all the strength of the arguments adduced in the matter are hostile to it; and that steam navigation by land will and ought to be the means of transit through Egypt. But that matter is a long way distant from our present subject. It is with reference to the transit over the other isthmus that I propose to say a few words. ”

“ The latter plan was in principle adopted, and the details were worked out, in 1883, by the Hungarian engineer Willandt. The longest canal will be that on the Servian bank, with a length of over two kilometers and a width of eighty meters. It will be left for a later period to make the canal wider and deeper, as was done with the Suez Canal. For the present it is considered sufficient that moderate sized steamers shall be able to pass through without hindrance, and thus facilitate the exchange of goods between the west of Europe and the east. ”

“ History is rapidly made in the nineteenth century. It is not in the least discreditable to Palmerston that he should have failed to realise how completely his anticipations would be falsified by events. No one at that time could have foreseen that, in less than thirty years from that date, the Suez Canal would not only have become an accomplished fact, but would have become perhaps the most successful industrial enterprise of modern times; that it would have revolutionised our shipping and transit trades ”

“ A treaty between England and France, signed in 1887, guaranteeing the neutrality of the Suez Canal. The Canal is to be at all times free to the ships of all nations, but in war time no belligerent is to be permitted to land troops or munitions of war in the Canal or its ports of access. The Khedive is charged with the carrying out of these stipulations. Practically all the Powers{245} concerned have given their adhesion to this instrument. ”

“ The importance of that route to Asia was thus greatly reduced as far as Europe was concerned, but, relatively, its importance to the United States was increased, for the Suez Canal does not shorten the Asiatic voyage from New York, Boston, or New Orleans to the same extent as it does for European ports.
The Old World had been severed into halves by the enterprise of one man, and that man no potentate, but merely one possessing the gift of persuasion. ”