THE FRENCH ACADEMY. 299 



great work. The Isthmus of Suez had long since 

 been selected as that the piercing of which was the 

 most urgent. Antiquity had pointed it out, and had 

 attempted the enterprise, but with insufficient means. 

 Leibnitz had indicated this work to Louis XIV. as 

 one worthy of his might. But the completion of such 

 a work demanded a faith which the seventeenth 

 century did not possess. It was the French Revolu- 

 tion which, reviving the age of fabulous expeditions and 

 a state of heroic youth in which man is guided in his 

 adventures by the flight of birds and the signs in the 

 heavens, propounded this problem in such a shape that 

 it could no longer be left dormant. The piercing of 

 the isthmus was part of the programme which the 

 Directory set before the Egyptian expedition. As in 

 the time of Alexander, the conquest of arms was also 

 the conquest of science. Upon December 24th, 1798, 

 our illustrious colleague, General Bonaparte, started 

 from Cairo accompanied by Berthier, Monge, Ber- 

 thollet, and other members of the Institute, as well as 

 by merchants who had obtained leave to follow in his 

 escort. On the 30th he lighted, to the north of Suez, 

 upon the vestiges of the old canal, and he followed 

 them for a distance of more than twelve miles. On 

 January 3rd, 1799, he saw,- near Belbeys, the other 

 end of the canal of the Pharaohs. The researches of 

 the Egyptian Commission have formed the basis of all 

 subsequent investigations, and the only point in which 

 they were defective was the view as to the difference 



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