CHAPTER VII. 



THE INTEKOCEANIC CANAL AND THE CONGEESS OF 1879. 



WHEN" the Isthmus of Suez was made we were 

 merely realising the aspirations of the early 

 masters of Egypt, for, according to the Arab histo- 

 rians, the Pharaoh who reigned in the time of Abra- 

 ham had already conceived the idea of dividing 

 the African isthmus, in honour of the visit of the 

 patriarch and his wife Sarah, so as to establish com- 

 munication by water between Egypt and Arabia. 



"We may ask, therefore, if it be true, as the old 

 proverb has it, that there is nothing new under the 

 sun, and that our ancestors discovered everything 

 that required doing, and merely left to us, their de- 

 scendants, the task of carrying out their designs ? 

 But even if this is so, we have no reason to be less 

 proud, for is it not a glorious thing for us to be able 

 to carry out the vast projects which they had con- 

 ceived but were unable to realise, thus affirming the 

 progress made by our race and age, in which all 

 obstacles seem to have disappeared. The other day 

 it was Suez, the isthmus of which was pierced, and 



