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vailed for nearly fifty years, being the result of an investigation ordered by 

 Napoleon when in Egypt in 1798. His chief civil engineer was ordered to 

 report upon the practicability of a canal between the two seas ; and the only 

 result was an apparent difference of thirty-two feet between the level of the 

 Red Sea and the Mediterranean. But, in 1846, a tripartite commission was set 

 at work to study the relative levels and tidal amplitudes of the two seas 

 and the Nile. In this commission Mr. Robert Stephenson represented 

 England ; France sent M. Talabot ; and the Chevalier Negrelli acted for 

 Austria. The result showed that the difference in the levels of the two seas 

 was so slight as to be of no practical account. 



Thus a great difficulty was removed in making an accurate calculation for 

 a work of such vast magnitude, as it was now made clear that if the 1 00 miles 

 of intervening land were intersected by an open channel of moderate width 

 and depth, the waters of the two seas would meet without the aid of locks or 

 any other artificial arrangement. 



At the first sight of the map of Europe, the Mediterranean would appear 

 to be higher than the Red Sea, because the former, confined as it is at its 

 mouth, being scarcely nine miles in width between Ceuta and Gibraltar, is 

 only the last of a chain of lakes of which the Sea of Azof, fed by the River 

 Don, is the first. The current is strong into the Black Sea at the Straits of 

 Yenikale, near Kertch, and still more rapid where the Black Sea flows through 

 the Bosphorus, a distance of eighteen miles into the Sea of Marmora. There 

 is also a strong current through the narrow passage of the Dardanelles from 

 the Sea of Marmora into the Mediterranean. Besides this absolute fall, the 

 waters of the Danube, the Nile, the Po, and the Rhone are received into the 

 Mediterranean ; and as the swell of the Atlantic at Gibraltar is always inwards, 

 from the prevailing westerly winds, a head of water might be supposed to 

 exist, that a canal through the Isthmus of Suez would, as it were, tap and let 

 into the Red Sea. If this were the case, a current would be created useful for 

 the passage of ships going to the eastward, but likely to damage the banks of 

 the canal, excavated for half its length in the sand of the desert. 



Again, the Red Sea, being an arm of the Indian Ocean, 1200 miles long, 

 confined at its entrance by the Straits of Bab-el-Mandeb, or the Gate of Tears 

 (so called by the Arabs from the frequency of shipwrecks in taking shelter 

 from the storms of the Indian Ocean), and the Island of Perim, would have its 

 tides disturbed from its narrowness, from the rapid growth of coral reefs, and 

 from the prevalence of the north-west wind, nine months out of the twelve, 

 that would keep back the water. But all this, as we shall see, however 

 ingenious in speculation, is not the case ; for the fact has been settled, to a 

 demonstration, that the waters of the two seas are almost level ; and that the 

 mass of water removed by evaporation under the almost constant hot sun in those 

 parallels of latitude accounts for a fact which would otherwise appear inexplicable. 



The siiggestion of the modern maritime Suez Canal is due to Ferdinand 

 de Lesseps, a man of the most indomitable perseverance and energy, with a 

 most suggestive mind, who has had to contend, and almost alone, with 

 difficulties that would have overwhelmed men not made after the fashion of 

 Christopher Columbus. England's jealousy of France was the first obstacle ; 

 and when that was disposed of, engineering jealousies began, and these 

 effectually retarded M. de Lesseps' object — the forming of a company with 

 whose funds the work might be commenced. Yet after almost as many years 

 waiting as Columbus passed in soliciting the slender means from his Sovereign 

 to add a new world to the Spanish Crown, M. de Lesseps has triumphed over 

 all ; and whether the canal ever pays or not, his name will always be connected 

 with one of the greatest public works ever attempted, contrived, begun, and 

 watched to its completion by the mind of one man. 



