THE SUEZ CANAL. 863 



are grazing. Trees have been planted, and not only along the roads ; some places 

 have been set so thickly as almost to appear like little forests. The route across the 

 delta, on the clear sunny day on which I travelled, was indeed charming, and I 

 had often to remind myself that I was really in Egypt, so totally changed was the 

 picture ; for here and there, also, the tall chimney of some manufactory was to be 

 seen rising above the trees or over the villages. Egypt will soon belong only 

 geographically to Africa ; in everything else it is becoming European. 



" The condition of the lower classes, also, shows a marked improvement. 

 Ophthalmia, perhaps the most painful scourge of Egypt, is now neither so wide- 

 spread nor so intense as formerly ; and if the people are not better fed than they 

 used to be, they have at least sufficient for their wants. Those inhabiting the 

 towns are remarkably improved. In Cairo there are not nearly so many barefooted 

 people as formerly ; and they are not contented with slippers, but wear European 

 boots. The fellahs, or peasants, also are decidedly improved. Their mud huts are 

 better built, and especially better roofed ; indeed, here and there peasant houses of 

 quite European type are now to be seen. 



" No doubt this rapid progress in Egypt has its shadow side. Like the children 

 of Israel of old, the people do not work for themselves, but are in heavy bondage 

 almost beyond their powers. Yet this development under high pressure is 

 undeniably to the advantage of the country. The greatest and most important, 

 because most universally active change, is certainly that of the improvement in 

 the climate, brought about by the more extended cultivation, and especially by the 

 numerous plantations of trees. Egypt is in a fair way to overturn its proverbial 

 rainlessness. In Alexandria rain now falls even to excess ; and Cairo, of which 

 the prophet of all travellers, Murray, in his handbook, still maintains that it enjoys 

 at most five or six light showers in the course of the year, had to record not fewer 

 than twenty-one such in the past year. I myself experienced a rainy day there 

 quite as wet as any known in England. The consequences of it were that the 

 unpaved streets were covered ankle-deep with mud, and all traffic except that in 

 carriages was at an end. 



" Naturally the ignorant Arabs ascribe these changes to supernatural agencies, 

 and since the year corresponds with that of the ascent of Mohammed Ali to the 

 throne, the witchcraft is supposed to emanate from him and his dynasty." 



The Suez Canal. 



The channel between the two seas, after having perhaps existed as a natural 

 artery for a short period during quarternary times, is known to have been indirectly 

 restored by the Pharaohs of the nineteenth dynasty, over thirty-three centuries ago. 

 A tradition recorded by Strabo attributes the construction of the canal to Sesostris, 

 Herodotus also tells us that Nekos, son of Psammaticus, began near Bubastes a canal 

 which skirted the quarries, that is, the hills now known as the Jebel-Mokattam, 

 thence trending eastwards to the Ped Sea. A hundred and twenty thousand hands 

 had already perished on these works of canalisation between the Nile and the coast, 



