Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume III.djvu/699

CANAL 689 40 m. from the present head of the Red sea, and which had then been cut off by a sand bank. It is said to have been continued by Darius Hystaspis as far as the lower Bitter Lakes; and though carried no further, it served | to water the land through which it flowed. As built by Darius, the canal was 37 m. long. About 270 B. 0. Ptolemy Philadelphus, who founded the city of Arsinoii on the northern extremity of the Heroopolite gulf, carried the canal to near that place, and according to Dio- dorus connected it with the sea by locks. It was about 92 m. long, and on an average about 150 ft. wide, and from 15 to 30 ft. deep. Pliny says it was 30 ft. deep, and it probably was for some portion of its length. It cannot he ascer- tained how long this canal was used, but it be- came obstructed by sand before the time of Trajan, who restored it at the beginning of the 2d century, at the same time changing its route. The Nile was deserting the Pelusiac branch, and it was determined to bring the water from a higher part of the river. Trajan therefore commenced the work at Babylon, opposite Memphis, and according to Sharpe it passed by Heliopolis, Scenaa Veteranorum, He- roopolis, and Serapion, joined the upper Bit- ter Lakes, and then passed to the Red sea at Clysma (which took its name from the locks), about 10 m. S. of Arsinoe. That town had ceased to be a port, having been separated from the sea by the drifting sands. This canal also became useless from the same cause, and re- mained so till the conquest of Egypt, 638-640, by Amru, the Arab general of the caliph Omar, who again restored it and gave it the title of the " Canal of the Prince of the Faithful." It was again used for more than a century, when it was finally destroyed by the command of the caliph Al-Mansour in 767, since which time it has never been restored. In modern times at- tention was first called to the subject of a canal across the isthmus of Suez by Napoleon I. du- ring his invasion of Egypt. He had a survey made by a corps of engineers, who reported that the level of the Red sea was 30 ft. higher than that of the Mediterranean ; an error which remained undisputed till 1840, when an English officer was led to the opinion from barometric measurements that the two seas had about the same water level at mean tide. The subject was agitated till 1847, when France, England, and Austria commissioned M. Talabot, Mr. Robert Stephenson, and Signer Negrelli to make a survey, which they did, reporting that the two seas had exactly the same mean level. Another examination was made in 1853, which confirmed the correctness of the survey of 1847 ; but Mr. Stephenson expressed an unfavorable opinion of the feasibility of the construction of a canal which would answer the purposes of commerce, on account of the liability of its be- coming obstructed by sand, which had been a cause of difficulty with the canal of the Pha- raohs, upon the old route of which, or near it, it was thus far proposed to construct the new one. There seemed to he much force in his position, and the project was never so favora- bly entertained by the English as by the French. In 1854 the viceroy of Egypt, Said Pasha, granted to M. Ferdinand de Lesseps, an engi- neer belonging to the French diplomatic ser- vice in Egypt, and a company to be formed by him for the purpose, the exclusive right of constructing a ship canal from Tineh, near the ruins of ancient Pelusium, to Suez. The plan of M. de Lesseps differed from those which had previously been considered, by proposing, in- stead of connecting the canal with the Nile, a more direct route, and instead of cutting it alongside of the chain of lakes that lie between the two seas, to carry it through them in a nearly direct line, and adopt a more easterly location for the northern terminus. The com- pany was organized in 1858 under the title of la compagnie unmerselle du canal maritime de Suez, and was guaranteed the right of way for 99 years, with the consideration that the Egyp- tian government is to receive 15 per cent, of the tolls. The company's capital was at first 200,000,000 francs, in 400,000 shares of 500 francs each, which was increased in 1867 by a loan of 100,000,000 francs. The work re- quired two distinct undertakings. The first and principal was the construction of the broad and deep salt-water channel, extending from Port Said to Suez, without locks. The other, preliminary in point of time, though secondary in importance, was the construction of a fresh-water canal, for transportation as well as for supplying water to the workmen and their families along the line. This canal commences at a place called Zagazig, and, re- ceiving water from the Nile, is carried to Suez, much of the way along the line of the ancient canal of the Pharaohs. It is navigable the whole distance, falls being overcome by locks. At Ismailia (named after the present khedive Ismail Pasha, who succeeded his uncle Said Pasha in 1863), a central point on the great canal at Lake Tiinsah, water was forced into a double line of 9-inch pipes, and carried by them along the line of the canal to Port Said. The length of the Suez canal is about 100 m., of which 75 m. are actual canal, while for 25 m. it passes through lakes, a portion of which af- forded water of sufficient depth, but the great- er part of which required excavating. The width of the canal, except at those place* where it runs through high ground, is 325 ft. at the surface and 72 ft. at the bottom, and the depth 26 ft. At the places referred to the width is only 195 ft. at the surface, with slopes of 2 to 1. At El-Guisr, a few miles north of LakeTimsah, for a distance of 11J m. the canal encounters the highest ground, the excavation varying from 30 to 85 ft. in depth. Twenty- five dredges and an immense force of laborers were engaged upon this division at one time, removing about 600,000 cubic metres of earth per month. The works at Port Said consist of a basin 875 yards square, and of an eastern and