practically almost as near as Cairo now is, and steam, gas, and soap and water had been fairly brought to bear upon her dingy, dirty streets and population. Good water has been found by boring at the base of the mountains which lie to the west of the Isthmus, and a short aqueduct would bring it in abundance to the town. Even the lack of herbage, of the refreshing green so delightful to man, will not, if we may trust the confident predictions of men who claim to speak with knowledge and authority on the subject, be ultimately wanting. The basin of the Bitter Lake, or Crocodile Sea, alone measuring 103,680 acres, with those of the other lagoons and pools, and a large portion of the long wadi, lying beneath the level of the Nile, may, say they, and would, as soon as a sufficient and paying demand for the produce had sprung up in the flourishing cities that will arise at each end of the sea-way through the now almost desert and uninhabitable Isthmus, be brought under cultivation, by leading over them the fertilising mud of that river. These, and many other health and life giving results which now sound like fanciful exaggerations upon the ear, would, there can be little question, swiftly follow the consummation of this new and intimate union of the young and vigorous West with the rich, glowing, but indolent Orient.

The author of Eastern Life,' before quoted, thus speaks (1848) of the quickening impulse already given to Suez and its neighbourhood. Captain Linguist's assertion, by the way, relative to the ancient canal, in opposition not alone to all history, but the positive report of the French engineers, is a very extraordinary one, and we cannot help thinking his auditor must have misunderstood him:-' After a comfortable breakfast at the hotel, which is kept by two Englishwomen, we went to an eminence near, where Captain Linguist pointed out to us the well whence only Suez obtains fresh water, and the first station in the Desert, and to the north the end of the Gulf, a stretch of two miles or so of shallow water. A few small vessels lay there, and along both shores to the southwards. Captain Linguist has followed out the traces of the ancient canal, and he can find no evidence that it was ever used or even finished; and he believes, therefore, that it can afford no precedent for the proposed new one, even supposing the state of the waters and shore to be unaltered, which nobody, I suppose, does believe. The next morning Captain Linguist took us in his boat over to the Arabian side. The view of Suez from the water was finer than I should have supposed possible for such a miserable place; but such an atmosphere adorns everything with the highest charms of colour. The light on the sides of the vessels, on the two minarets, and through the shallow waters, was a feast. The coral shoals below, red and dark, contrasted with the pale-green above the sandy bottom. Captain Linguist was delighted to improvise a luncheon for us at his countryhouse at the Wells of Moses. He shewed us his garden, which is well irrigated, and as productive as garden can be in such a place. He shewed us the ancient wells, all shrouded in bushy palms, and pointed out indications of moisture, which encourage him to search for another well. The luncheon he gave us was extraordinary enough in its place to deserve mention. Here, amongst these dreary sands of the Arabian shore, we had butter from Ireland, ale from England, wine from

a

Spain, ham from Germany, bread and mutton from Cairo and Suez, cheese from Holland, and water from Madras. Truly, the dwellers on the Red Sea may well be advocates of free-trade.' This slight notice of the lady-traveller affords, it will be admitted, hopeful promise; but in the meantime we have to remark, that the harbour of Suez has no great depth of water. True, it is said that the fleets of Solyman the Magnificent once rode therein; but the word fleet bears a very different significance at Portsmouth in these days of Queen Victoria from what it did in those of Solyman at Suez or Constantinople. There is always great danger of misapprehension and confusion of ideas in the application of terms, the essential meaning of which has wholly or partially changed. Herodotus says the vessels which carried the produce of Armenia to Babylon on the Euphrates were of about 130 tons respectable figure even in these Great-Britain times. But when the explanation comes, we find the said boats or vessels were merely rafts surrounded by and floated upon inflated skins; and the medieval galleys of the magnificent conqueror of Belgrade were, we may be quite satisfied, not more than about half way at the most between the Armenian rafts of Herodotus and a stout merchant-ship of the present day. Spite, then, of Solyman's precedent, the shallowness of the water both at Suez and along the Mediterranean shore of the Isthmus, presents one of the greatest difficulties attending the construction of the proposed ship-canal with which modern engineering science will have to contend. Having thus briefly touched upon the several interesting localities along and in the neighbourhood of this route to India and Arabia, we proceed to lay before the reader the chief features in the most feasible of the plans that have been suggested for the attainment of the desired object, prefacing the relation with a short account of the way in which the Isthmus is now scrambled over by passengers to and from Europe and Eastern Asia. But first let us devote a few lines to

A GLANCE FROM SUEZ ACROSS THE ISTHMUS

towards Egypt and the Mediterranean, which will perhaps render what we have to say more clear and intelligible than, in the absence of a map, it might otherwise be.

The reader will bear in mind that the Red Sea - the Kolzon of the Arabs-is nearly thirty-three feet higher than the Mediterranean on the northern shore of the Isthmus, the nearest point of which is about seventyfive miles distant, in a direct line, from where we are now standing. The comparatively mountainous land to the east and west of us is broken, you may perceive, by a wide trough or hollow on this shore, so slightly above the level of the Arabian Gulf that a cutting of a few feet in depth only would admit its waters into that great hollow or basin, evidently a continuation of the cavity filled by the gulf, and the bottom of which cavity is twenty feet below the Red Sea at low water. You may distinctly trace it in a north-westerly direction by a succession of lakes, lagoons, and pools-the southernmost and nearest to us of which is the Bitter Lake already spoken of-to the vast surface of the Lake Menzaleh, which has an opening to the Mediterranean on the north-west shore of the Isthmus.

The northward and westward flow of the waters thus admitted would meet with no greater obstacle in their passage to the Delta of Egypt and the Lake Menzaleh than would be offered by the dikes thrown across the wadi to exclude the waters of the Nile; which river itself is only for a few weeks at its highest flood higher at Cairo than the Red Sea, and except during those few weeks very much lower. It is obvious, therefore, that means must be devised of effectually confining the admitted waters of the Arabian Gulf to the required channel, or the whole of the Delta would be hopelessly submerged. The Pelusiac or eastern arm of the Nile, and consequently the nearest to us, like the Canoptic or more western arm with which Alexander connected his canal, terminates in the Lake Menzaleh, or at least did so, for the Pelusiac arm is now so completely blocked up by sand as to be almost entirely obliterated. The Nile has, moreover, two outlets to the Mediterranean at the eastward of Alexandria by the Boghas of Rosetta and Damietta—at the east and west extremities of the base of the triangle formed by the two great branches of the river enclosing the Delta of Egypt. These Boghas are wide but shallow passes through which, especially when the river has fallen, no vessel of any considerable draught could pass. Cairo, on the Nile-considerably to the south of the ancient Bubastis on the Pelusiac branch, near which the ancient Canal of the Kings terminated—is on our left westward, and distant in a direct line about seventy miles. Between Alexandria and Cairo about 170 miles of river and canal intervene, navigable throughout only for a few months in the year, except by vessels of very light draught. By the present route, consequently, the traveller from Alexandria to Suez has to perform a canal, river, and desert journey of about 250 miles. He embarks at Alexandria on the canal that Mohammed Ali dug out at such a reckless expense of human life. This takes him to Atfeh, where there is a narrow barrier of land to keep in the water of the canal when the Nile has fallen low he there steps on board a Nile steamer, which conveys him to Boulac, a port about two miles to the north of Cairo. From Cairo to Suez across the desert the journey is performed on camels, dromedaries, or asses; in the same manner, in fact, by which Cheops must have passed it if he ever went that road.

It will be now quite clear to the reader that the products and merchandise exchanged between Great Britain and Eastern and Southern Asia will continue to be sent round by the Cape in preference to such a route as this, even during the eight months in the year when the Nile is of considerable or rather tolerable depth. The length of the ancient canal by Serapeum, at the northern extremity of the Bitter Lake to the Pelusiac branch of the Nile, being ninety-two miles, its restoration merely, it is evident, would only lengthen the distance to be traversed, and continue the shallow and fluctuating navigation of Mohammed Ali's canal and the Nile river a manifestly insufficient and unsatisfactory arrangement, more especially when it is remembered that the French engineers who reported in favour of such a plan, themselves admit that the long water-passage they proposed to effect from Suez to the Mediterranean could only, if their most favourable anticipations were realised, be kept open about eight months in the year. The British view of the subject contemplates another basis of operations; and the question anxiously

sought to be resolved is this: whether it is not possible to cut a navigable ship-canal directly across the Isthmus in its narrowest part from the Bay of Tyneh to Suez on the Red Sea, avoiding the Delta and the Nile altogether; or, if insurmountable obstacles should be found to oppose themselves to so direct a transit, to follow the basin of the lakes as far as Serapeum only, and thence diverge in a straight, direct course to the Bay of Tyneh. The first line named would be much the shortest, but the length of the artificial cutting would be considerably less by the lastnamed plan, and still less than by that if the natural cavity were followed farther on by the wadi, and thence struck from to the Mediterranean; inasmuch as those points of departure for the straight cutting would be very much nearer to Tyneh than is Suez. The reader has now a sufficiently clear, general conception of the work to be done, and the differing tracks by which the junction of the two seas must be, if at all, effected. It remains, therefore, only to trace them in fuller detail.

The first in priority of date is the once much-lauded scheme proposed by M. Lepère and other French engineers of the Ponts et Chaussées service of France, who surveyed the Isthmus carefully for the purpose, during the occupation of Egypt by the French army under Bonaparte at the close of the eighteenth century. In none of the projects for the aggrandisement of himself and France, and for writing his name in giant and indelible characters on the earth, did Napoleon display more eagerness than in the design he formed for uniting the Mediterranean, the Arabian, and Indian Seas. The extrusion of the French from Egypt of course forbade the execution of M. Lepère's plan; and even if accomplished, it would hardly, one would think, have realised Bonaparte's wishes and anticipations. It was mainly a renewal of the old canal, with changes and improvements, such as locks-contrivances unknown to the ancients-which modern ingenuity has placed at the disposal of engineers; and it may fairly be discussed under the head of

RESTORATION OF THE CANAL OF THE KINGS.

It was to be sure reported that there might be a subsidiary canal from about Serapeum to Tyneh, which would increase the length of the works to nearly 120 miles, but the mainly elaborated feature of the plan was the water-communication of Suez with the Nile on the Pelusiac branch, which was of course to be cleared out: its bed was also to be deepened, and connecting canals at Cairo and Alexandria were to be restored and enlarged. There were to be seven locks constructed, and an immense reservoir formed near the centre of the work where the canal to Tyneh would depart from. By these means an average depth, it was thought, of about eighteen feet might be obtained when the Nile was at its full; but the admitted fact that the communication could not be kept open at all for vessels of any the lightest draught during four months in the year must damage this project irretrievably in the estimation of a great commercial nation whose relations with India are so great and varied as those of Great Britain. The masonry of M. Lepère's canal was to be carried four feet above its highest level, as some protection against its being blocked up by the mobile sands of the desert. The cost of the work from Suez to the

Pelusiac branch of the Nile, it was estimated, would not exceed £691,000 a very small amount, it seems to us, judging by the expense of similar works, for a locked and reservoired canal, upwards of ninety miles in length, without the subsidiary branch to the Bay of Tyneh, which it was calculated would raise the cost to upwards of £2,000,000 sterling. This latter part of the plan was, however, very imperfectly elaborated. One reason for this at the time probably was, that the embouchure on the open shore at Tyneh must have been at the mercy of the strongest maritime power; and the recent destructive fight at Aboukir, to the west of the Isthmus, had settled which that was to be, for some time to come at all events.

This is our opinion. It may, however, be more satisfactory to give the reasons as published by the French engineers for their preference of a long, tortuous, inland navigation to a direct sea-transit across the Isthmus. 'It has been seen,' they say, 'in the accounts of ancient authors, that the different princes who attempted the junction of the two seas only had recourse to the Nile to effect their object after having encountered obstacles almost insurmountable in the extreme mobility of the sands of the desert, in the⚫ direction of Pelusium from Suez, between the Bitter Lake and the Lake Menzaleh-which distance cut through would have effected the desired communication. But there existed a more facile means of accomplishing this object, which was the establishment of an interior navigation. On another hand the Egyptians would not have the canal debouch into the Mediterranean, which they called "a stormy sea," lest they should expose themselves to the attacks of the Greeks, whom they appear to have looked upon with dread for a great length of time. The present state of things would no doubt better permit a direct and exclusive opening of the Isthmus; but other considerations militate in favour of the ancient direction: the more so, for where, in the event of such a direct cutting of the Isthmus, could a convenient port be formed on the low shore of Pelusium—a work which, nevertheless, could not be dispensed with? It is only too certain that it could only be with the greatest difficulty that a permanent position could be formed on the maritime front of the Delta, because the soil is entirely alluvial, constantly raised and increased by new deposits of mud which the Nile brings down during its rise, and that access to the shore will be always dangerous. The frequent shipwrecks which take place further establish the danger of such a landing-place, which is not less formidable for navigators than the boghas of the Nile. It is also certain that the ports of Alexandria and the road of Aboukir would soon be blocked up if they were situated to the east of the mouths of the Nile, and exposed to the action of the prevalent north-west winds; for if the port of Alexandria, once so magnificent, still presents some of its pristine advantages, it is less because of works of art provided by the influence of a careless government, than of the bearings and rocky nature of the coast. And as the communication of the two seas by. means of the Nile ought to be in the direction best fitted to establish an active correspondence between the different commercial places of Egypt, we think it would be best to adopt the primitive direction of the Canal of the Kings-leaving the Nile from about Bubastis.'

The first north-western section of this restored Canal of the Kings, as modified by M. Lepère, would have commenced from about the ancient