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Mr. J. F. Bateman on the Suez Canal. [Jan. 6, 



along the valley or depression containing Lake Menzaleh, Lake Ballah, 

 Lake Timsah, and the Bitter Lakes. The character of this route was well 

 described in 1830 by General (then Captain) Chesney, R.A., who examined 

 and drew up a report on the country between the Mediterranean and the 

 Red Sea. At that time a difference of 30 feet between the two seas was still 

 assumed, and all proposals for canals were laid out on that assumption. 

 Allowance must, of course, be made for this error, in so far as it affected 

 any particular project of canal ; but it would not affect the accuracy of 

 any general description of the district to be traversed. General Chesney 

 summed up his report by stating, " as to the executive part, there is but 

 one opinion : there are no serious difficulties ; not a single mountain in- 

 tervenes, scarcely what deserves to be called a hillock ; and in a country 

 where labour can be had without limit, and at a rate infinitely below that 

 of any other part of the world, the expense would be a moderate one for 

 a single nation, and scarcely worth dividing among the great kingdoms of 

 Europe, who would all be benefited by the measure." 



M. Lesseps was well advised therefore in the route he selected, and 

 (assuming the possibility of keeping open the canal) in the character of 

 the project he proposed. 



From 1849 to 1854 he was occupied in maturing his project for a 

 direct canalization of the Isthmus. In the latter year Mahomet Said 

 Pasha became Viceroy of Egypt, and sent at once for M. Lesseps to con- 

 sider with him the propriety of carrying out the work he had in view. 

 The result of this interview was, that on the 30th of November in the 

 same year a Commission was signed at Cairo charging M. Lesseps to con- 

 stitute and direct a Company named "The Universal Suez Canal Com- 

 pany." In the following year, 1855, M. Lesseps, acting for the Viceroy, 

 invited a number of gentlemen eminent as directors of public works, as 

 engineers, and distinguished in other ways, to form an International Com- 

 mission for the purpose of considering and reporting on the practicability 

 of forming a ship canal between the Mediterranean and the Red Sea. 

 This Commission, which included some of the ablest civil and military 

 engineers of Europe, was honorary, and its members were considered as 

 guests of the Viceroy. * 



The Commission met in Egypt in December 1855 and January 1856, 

 and, accompanied by M. Lesseps, and by Mougel Bey and Linant Bey, 

 engineers, and other gentlemen in the service of the Viceroy, they made 

 a careful examination of the harbours in the two seas and of the in- 

 tervening Desert, and arrived at the conclusion that a ship canal was 

 practicable between the Gulf of Pelusium in the Mediterranean and the Red 

 Sea near Suez. They differed, however, as to the mode in which such a 

 canal should be constructed. The three English engineering members of the 

 Commision were of opinion that a ship canal raised 25 feet above the 

 sea-level, and communicating with the Bay of Pelusium at one end and 



