Leaving Port Said on a steamer, I soon find myself gliding through this Canal, whose construction is regarded as one of the grandest triumphs of modern science. Great banks of sand rise on either side, and the blue sky stretches above our merchant ship. We are constantly passing large merchant ships going to south Africa and to India, and meeting others coming from there. Every few hundred yards, we see a dredging machine at work deepening and widening the Canal. The desert sands are ever encroaching upon it. I believe it will finally have to be walled up with rock. The Suez Canal was opened, more than twenty years ago, in the presence of representatives of nearly every civilized government. It is 110 miles long, 26 feet deep, 72 feet wide at the bottom, and 140 feet at the top, and was constructed at a cost of almost one hundred million dollars. “The great advantage of the Canal,” says the _London Times_, “is, of course, the decrease of the distance to be traveled between Europe and India; for, while it is about 11,200 miles from London or Hamburg, by the Cape of Good Hope, to Bombay, by the Suez it is only 6,332. This reduces the voyage by twenty-four days. From Marseilles or Genoa, a saving of thirty days is effected, and from Trieste thirty-seven.” The rates at which steamers are allowed to pass is from five to six miles per hour.
While the French furnished the brains and the money for the construction of the Canal, it is at present chiefly owned by Great Britain, Disraeli having bought up a great part of the stock, when considerably below par, for 4,000,000 pounds. Since that time, however, the value has increased to nearly 11,000,000 pounds. It was, therefore, a paying investment. Out of every one hundred vessels passing this way, seventy-five of them belong to England. The Canal is jealously guarded by English forts and English men-of-war. The British Lion has laid his paw upon Egypt, and ere long a change will come over the spirit of somebody’s dreams.
Passing through the land of Goshen, where Israel dwelt, then through a series of lakes, and finally by the town of Suez, we enter the Red Sea. There is more life in or on this sea than around its waters. Nevertheless, it is of surpassing interest to the students of sacred and profane history. The place where Moses led the children of Israel across the sea can not be determined with certainty. The authorities are about equally divided between each of two places. Pharaoh and his host were swallowed up by the sea, and no one has ever thought enough of them even to fish for their chariot wheels. A thinking man, with a devout heart in him, trembles as he stands upon the shore of this sea, and reads the thirteenth and fourteenth chapters of Exodus, and especially when in the vicinity of Mount Sinai he reads the nineteenth and twentieth chapters.