"But Ismail had signed too many notes of hand. The day of reckoning
came. Ismail sold his canal shares to the English government, and by
their purchase Benjamin Disraeli gave the British empire dominion over
the traffic between the East and the West. It was a bold stroke, and
it brought to an end the commercial aspirations of the French of the
Second Empire. The canal company still has its chief offices in Paris,
its clerks speak French, and its tolls are charged in francs, but
otherwise it is English.
"Ismail was dethroned and died in exile, his magnificence forgotten.
De Lesseps ventured on another canal project, was plunged into
disgrace, and died a mental wreck. Egypt, which once levied toll on
all the commerce passing between Orient and Occident, now watches the
trade ships pass by. The digging of the canal was the greatest blow
ever given to Egyptian commerce. But the losses of Ismail and De
Lesseps and Egypt make up the gain of the civilized world.
"Opened just forty years ago, its importance has increased with every
year, and its revenues are expanding each month. It cost $100,000,000,
half of which was spent in bribes and excessive discounts. With modern
machinery, such as is being used at Panama, it could have been built
for one-quarter as much. As an engineering problem it is to the Panama
Canal as a boy's toy block house to a forty-story skyscraper. How it
will compare with Panama as an avenue of commerce is a question to
which Americans anxiously await the answer."
The jubilee of the Suez Canal, work on which commenced in 1859, took
place on April 25, 1909. When I passed through in 1874 its depth was
about twenty-six feet; the present depth is about thirty-two and a half
feet, and improvements are now going on which will bring it to
thirty-four feet. The original width was seventy-one feet on the
bottom, and this has been gradually increased until at present the
bottom width is ninety-seven and a half feet. In 1870 there passed
through the canal four hundred and eighty-six ships, whose gross
tonnage was 654,914. Last year 3,795 ships used the canal, and their
total tonnage was over 19,000,000. Truly this is one of the world's
greatest conveniences!
[Illustration: PILLARS OF THOTHMES III., KARNAK, EGYPT, WITH TWO YOUNG
MEN ON THE LOOKOUT FOR BUSINESS. THEY ARE BOTH WORTHY OF EVERY
ENCOURAGEMENT]
These reminiscences take me back again to Alexandria, as it was there
that an original seaboard bank was founded. Its first president was
Katchaskatchkan, a nephew of King Ram's. The old man saw to it that
all the "squeeze" from the corn crop money was deposited here and that
it held the margins on Joseph's grain corner. "Katch" broke his neck
by falling into the wheat pit, but the incident was soon forgotten in
the advancing prosperity of the bank. The place is in ruins, but we
saw the "paying teller's gun," which was a decorated club with spikes
on it; it lay unnoticed in a nook in the big amalgamated copper vault,
covered with papyrus books and records of the bank. Some of the old
past due notes on the shelves were still drawing interest and you could
hear it tick like the clanking cogs when a ferry boat makes her
landing. The writer fairly shudders at what the interest on those
notes would now amount to, computed at five per cent. (the prevailing
rate paid for call loans in that historic corner), remembering that the
interest on a penny compounded at this rate since the dawn of the
Christian era would now represent fourteen millions of globes of
eighteen-karat gold, each globe the size of our earth! We could not
help philosophizing on the change which had taken place in banking
principles and methods since those old days; and the whole inspection
was very interesting.
[Illustration: OBELISK OF THOTHMES I AND QUEEN HAPSHEPSET XVIII
DYNASTY. TWO FINE OBELISKS IN THE TEMPLE OF KARNAK--A LITTLE
TOPSY-TURVY LOOKING AND VERY MUCH IN NEED OF REPAIRS]
I am reluctant to leave Egypt without saying a word about the "teep,"
as this land is the very home, the embodiment--the Gibraltar, so to
speak, of the wide-open palm for services rendered--or even when they
are not rendered. Egypt is not the only place, however, of which this
can be said; there are others. But no matter where the dear American
tourist lands he "gets it" both coming and going, and the "neck" is
usually the place where it first attracts his attention. It is not a
new thing, by any means, for the Greeks suffered more from it than we
ever have. They called it "gifts," and if a man didn't give, why, he
got nothing, just as he gets nothing to-day in "Del's" if he tries to
escape with a glad smile instead of the regulation tariff. Usually, as
we all know, the rough time is at the reckoning and the departure, if
you haven't done the handsome. The waiter, if he knows his business,
makes you feel your cheapness if you attempt to "do" him with an
affable "Good-night," instead of the real thing. The change is so
arranged for you that you may have a wide choice of coins, but if that
scheme misses fire, there are still left the overcoat and the hat. The
man who can pass through these ordeals with his nerve unfrayed and look
through the waiter as if he were a pane of glass, would never have
turned a hair if placed in front at the charge of Balaclava. I
remember writing a _menu_ card for a dinner once, and when I came to
the sweetbread course it was shown that if you hadn't a coin you must
still do something. Lucullus was waiting on the bank of the river Styx
for his turn on Charon's ferryboat, and of course, being a shade, he
had no money in his clothes; but this is what was said:
When Lucullus got on Charon's skiff
He didn't have a cent;
So he handed out a sweetbread
And on the boat he went.
This was as straight a tip as was ever given to a waiter or at a
horse-race. There was nothing between Lucullus and the "bread line"
except his last sweetbread; yet as a gentleman he gave it up to the
ferryman rather than lose his poise when leaving the earth.
But to return to the twentieth century, about four thousand years since
the incident just related occurred: we have a variety of names for the
same thing. It is _pour boire_ in France; _tip_ in England; _macaroni_
"for the crew" in Italy; _sugar-cane_ "for the donkey" on the Nile;
_bakshish_ in Africa; "_bakshish_" the first word the traveler hears
when he gets there, "_bakshish_" the last when he is leaving. Why,
they say the Sphinx herself tears her hair and plaintively wails when
the sun has set, "_Bakshish! Bakshish!! Bakshish!!!_" And the only
reason she does not hold out her hands for it is that she hasn't any.
[Illustration: THIS IS WHERE "RAM" FELL DOWN AND HAS NEVER SINCE BEEN
"LIFTED." IT TAKES _PIASTRES_ TO PUT SUCH A BIG MAN ON HIS FEET.
STONY MACADAM, PRESIDENT OF THE BAKSHISH TRUST & TIPPING COMPANY, WITH
HIS CASHIER AND ENTIRE BOARD OF DIRECTORS IN ATTENDANCE. IT'S A TOUGH
PROBLEM "STONY" CAN'T SOLVE IF THERE'S MONEY BEHIND IT]
Sailing from Alexandria we headed for the Straits of Messina and
reached them the day following, taking a passing look at Etna and
Stromboli. Messina was not so badly damaged, we thought, as had been
reported, and it will undoubtedly be rebuilt. Then we steamed past
Capri and made fast to the wharf at Naples.