374 VISCOUNT FERDINAND DE LESSEPS. 



have given to this sceptical age of ours a striking proof of the efficacy 

 of faith." 



We are satisfied that here is the point of view from which the con- 

 fidence and the enthusiasm of M. de Lesseps is comprehensible. How 

 could he possibly have expected to convert such a man as Lord 

 Palmerston ? The result of their interview was that M. de Lesseps 

 doubted the sanity of the Premier, while the latter regarded him as an 

 adventurer, — a soldier of fortune, — employed, perhaps, in the interest 

 of some French " move '"' in Egypt. In reality, there stood before the 

 great statesman a simple-minded Da Gama, who had discovered a new 

 route to India and offered himself as the pilot. It was nobody's in- 

 terest then to make him a figure-head, — he was at the other end of the 

 ship ; it was his trick at the wheel. 



After the failure of the Egyptian expedition, Napoleon, in 1803, 

 instructed Matthew de Lesseps, Political Agent in Egypt, to nominate 

 for election and for the Sultan's approval an officer of ability to serve 

 as Pasha of Cairo. M. de Lesseps named one who was then in com- 

 mand of a regiment of Basha Bazouks, a Macedonian, who could 

 neither read nor write, and who had come to Egypt as a subordinate of 

 contingents. This man was Mehemet Ali, — the wise and terrible, — 

 who subsequently made himself master and mortgagee of Egypt. It 

 was he who built the Mahmoudieh Canal, — the last, and perhaps the 

 greatest, of non-militant works ever executed by unaided human 

 hands. He also inaugurated work on the Barage — the dream of 

 Hassan — over which Egypt liad brooded five hundred years ; and it 

 was he that discovered the potential energies of young Lesseps, whom 

 he caused to sit at his feet and listen to the narrative of his slaughter 

 of the Mamelukes, and the now possible project of a cut through to 

 Suez, which the Viceroy was ready to undertake, under a grand corvee, 

 except that he feared the would-be and could-be mistresses of India. 



It was at this time (while consular pupil in 1832) that Ferdinand 

 de Lesseps became the companion, and incidentally the teacher, of 

 Said Pasha, the son of the Viceroy, on whom was laid the futurition 

 of the father's dream, — and the dream of all the Pharaohs. The 

 " memorandum " prepared for this prince by M. de Lesseps, long 

 after, connects itself in our minds with these boyhood days, when he 

 says, " The names of the Egyptian sovereigns who erected the Pyra- 

 mids remain unknown, — the name of the prince who opens the great 

 maritime canal will be blessed from century to century down to the 

 most distant posterity," — so well did this "grand .Frenchman" 

 understand and share the hope of glory upon which he counted. 



