MARITIME CANALS IN GREECE. 613 
the aquatic animal and vegetable life of two seas and two zones 
to which I alluded in a former chapter.* 
A collateral feature of this great enterprise deserves notice as 
possessing no inconsiderable geographical importance. I refer 
to the conduit or conduits constructed from the Nile to the 
isthmus, primarily to supply fresh water to the laborers on the 
great canal, and ultimately to serve as aqueducts for the city 
of Suez and other towns on the line of the canal, and for the 
irrigation and reclamation of a large extent of desert soil. In 
the flourishing days of the Egyptian empire, the waters of the 
Nile were carried over important districts east of the river. In 
later ages, most of this territory relapsed into a desert, from 
the decay of the canals which once fertilized it. There is no 
difficulty in restoring the ancient channels, or in constructing 
new, and thus watering not only all the soil that the wisdom 
of the Pharaohs had improved, but much additional land. 
Hundreds of square miles of arid sand waste would thus be 
converted into fields of perennial verdure, and the geography 
of Lower Egypt would be thereby sensibly changed. Con- 
siderable towns are growing up at both ends of the channel, 
and at intermediate points, all depending on the maintenance 
of aqueducts from the Nile, both for water and for the irrigation 
of the neighboring fields which are to supply them with bread. 
Important interests will thus be created, which will secure the 
permanence of the hydraulic works and of the geographical 
changes produced by them, and Suez, or Port Said, or Ismailich, 
may become the capital of the government which has been so 
long established at Cairo. 
Maritine Canals in Greece. 
A maritime canal executed and another projected in ancient 
times, the latter of which is again beginning to excite attention, 
* According to an article by Ascherson, in Petermann’s Mittheilungen, vol. 
xvii., p. 247, the sea-grass floras of the opposite sides of the Isthmus of Suez 
are as different as possible. It does not appear whether they have yet in- 
termixed. 
