A Confederate Soldier in Egypt by William Wing Loring

Author:William Wing Loring [Loring, William Wing]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Geschichte
Publisher: Jazzybee Verlag
Published: 2017-07-19T22:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER XIX. THE SUEZ CANAL.

Historic anticipation of the Suez Canal—The considerations that deterred the ancient Pharaoh, Necho, and the modern Pharaoh, Mehemet—Lesseps's first conception of the canal—A project forty years in hatching—Saïd's enthusiastic acceptance of the scheme—Ismail comes into power saddled with Saïd's pledges and a heavy debt—The corvé or forced labor system and its abolition at the instance of England—Ismail accepts the retrocession of the sweet-water canal and its adjacent lands—Extraordinary claims for indemnity—Napoleon III. as arbitrator gives a judgment of 84,000,000 francs against the Viceroy—The magnificent fêtes on the completion of the canal—England as a factor in the present status of the Suez.THE connection of the Mediterranean and the Red Sea has interested the world in all ages. As early as the time of the great Pharaohs of the nineteenth dynasty a canal connected Lake Timsah and the Pelusium branch of the Nile, there being evidence of it engraved upon the walls of the great banquet-hall in the temple of Karnak at Thebes. About 650 years before the Christian era the Pharaoh Necho attempted the connection, and after expending vast sums and causing the death of many thousands of his people he abandoned it, giving as a reason that he had consulted the oracle, which sagely told him that if he pursued his progressive ideas too far the Phœnicians, those famous old mariners, would be precipitated upon him and swallow up his country as in a vast maelstrom. His counsellor added that Egypt with her dense population had originated her own prosperity, and was marvellously gifted for duration, having stood the shock of time for thousands of years, and it was best that he should turn his progressive ideas in another direction. The result was that his surplus energy was expended in circumnavigating the continent of Africa.

These undertakings were followed by similar schemes of the Persians, Greeks, Romans, and Arabians, all being limited to the connection of the Nile with the basin of the Red Sea, to facilitate the traffic between Egypt and Arabia. In supplying the only requirements of the age in this simple manner they opened a navigable route between the seas. That which antiquity did not need—a short and direct communication—became a paramount necessity in the present century. At an early day, after all traces of former canals had disappeared, Mehemet Ali, an illiterate Greek Mahometan, then Viceroy of Egypt, was besought to expend the life and money of his people to construct a ship canal, one commensurate in magnitude with the enormous navigation and commerce of the world. Without knowing history, but possessed of strong sense, the modern Pharaoh adopted the sensible policy of the old one, and he too consulted the oracle, which informed him that it was best not to precipitate the barbarians upon him by any such act of folly, and he wisely resisted the speculators and Consuls-General. Time passed, and Säid Pacha, when a prince, came under the magic influence of De Lesseps and was beguiled into promising him the

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