112 THE SEA. 



the free inflow of money. The Viceroy had been so much annoyed by the opposition 

 shown to the scheme, that it took a good deal of tact on the part of its promoter to 

 make things run smoothly. For the first four years, Lesseps, in making the necessary 

 international and financial arrangements, travelled 80,000 miles per annum. 



At length the scheme emerged from fog to fact. The Viceroy had promised 20,000 

 Egyptian labourers, but in 1861 he begged to be let out of his engagement. He had to 

 pay handsomely for the privilege. Although the men were paid higher than they had ever 

 been before, their labour was cheap : it cost double or treble the amount to employ foreigners. 



The Canal, in its course of a shade over 100 miles, passes through several salt 

 marshes, "Les Petits Bassins des Lacs Amers/' in one of which a deposit of salt was 

 found, seven miles long by five miles wide. It also passes through an extensive piece of 

 water, Lake Menzaleh. 



At Lake Menzaleh the banks are very slightly above the level of the Canal, and 

 from the deck of a big steamer there is an unbounded view over a wide expanse of lake 

 and morass studded with islets, and at times gay and brilliant with innumerable flocks 

 of rosy pelicans, scarlet flamingoes, and snow-white spoonbills, geese, ducks, and other birds. 

 The pelicans may be caught bodily from a boat, so clumsy are they in the water, without the 

 expenditure of powder and shot. Indeed, the sportsman might do worse than visit the Canal, 

 where, it is almost needless to state, the shooting is open to all. A traveller, who has recently 

 passed through the Canal en route to India, writes that there are alligators also to be seen. 

 The whole of the channel through Lake Menzaleh was almost entirely excavated with dredges. 

 When it was necessary to remove some surface soil before there was water enough for the 

 dredges to float, it was done by the natives of Lake Menzaleh, a hardy and peculiar race, 

 quite at home in digging canals or building embankments. The following account shows 

 their mode of proceeding : " They place themselves in files across the channel. The men in 

 the middle of the file have their feet and the lower part of their legs in the water. These 

 men lean forward and take in their arms large clods of earth, which they have previously 

 dug up below the water with a species of pickaxe called a fass, somewhat resembling a 

 short, big hoe. The clods are passed from man to man to the bank, where other men 

 stand with their backs turned, and their arms crossed behind them, so as to make a sort 

 of primitive hod. As soon as each of these has had enough clods piled on his back, he 

 walks off, bent almost double, to the further side of the bank, and there opening his arms, 

 lets his load fall through to the ground. It is unnecessary to add that this original metier 

 requires the absence of all clothing." * 



Into the channel thus dug the dredges were floated. One of the machines employed 

 deserves special mention. The long couloir (duct) was an iron spout 230 feet long, five 

 and a half wide, and two deep, by means of which a dredger working in the centre 

 of the channel could discharge its contents beyond the bank, assisted by the water which 

 was pumped into it. The work done by these long-spouted dredges has amounted to as 

 much as 120,000 cubic yards a-piece of soil in a month. By all kinds of ingenious 

 appliances invented for the special needs of the occasion, as much as 2,763,000 cubic yards of 



* O. Ritt, " Histoire de 1'Isthme de Suez." 



