THE NILE DELTA AND THE SUEZ CANAL.
A trip into Egypt would be incomplete without obtaining a view of the
Delta of the Nile, which lies east and southeast of Alexandria.
The ancient Egyptians believed that the alluvial deposit at the mouth of
their beloved river had been gained from the sea, but modern geographers
believe it to have been formed by particles of earth, which in the
course of ages have been deposited at the river's mouth.
The water of the Nile is usually of a deep blue color, which changes to
a reddish brown during the annual overflow of its banks.
All the Nile countries, or those which border on its banks, receive a
deposit of soil during the annual inundation. This deposit, which covers
even the rocks, consists of earth or loam mixed more or less with sand.
Around the Delta we find very noticeable signs of the gradual sinking of
the ground. What were known as the "Baths of Cleopatra" at Alexandria
have already sunk below the level of the water.
Several changes, due to the annual inundation, have taken place. In 1784
a lagoon, or small lake, was formed at Aboukir by the invasion of the
sea. The bed of what now constitutes Lake Menzaleh was once a densely
populated region.
The Delta presents the appearance of an immense marsh during the season
of inundation; the various islands, villages, towns, and plantations
can barely be discerned above the water's level.
The houses of the well-to-do peasants in the Nile villages are built of
bricks dried in the sun; the chief magistrate usually has a more
pretentious house built of bricks that have been baked in regular ovens
or kilns; the humbler peasants content themselves with huts, which they
form from the mud of the Nile and roof over with the leaves and stems of
the palm. The whole is then plastered with a coating of mud.
In these villages, a minaret towers above the various houses and hotels;
while a few sycamores spread their leafy crowns and make the chief
ornament of the village. Slender date trees sway in the breeze, and the
long racemes of the acacia shed their delicate perfume abroad.
The rains of the tropics, to which the rise of the Nile is due, reach
Egypt about the middle of June; they do not reach the Delta till about
the end of the month.
The rise of the river dates from the appearance of the red water, about
the middle of July. The water does not reach its maximum height till
near the end of September. By the middle of October it has sunk very
perceptibly, and by the month of April has gradually subsided to its
minimum depth.
By the end of November the irrigated land has dried sufficiently to
allow of its being sown. Soon the eye is gladdened by the sight of a
rich covering of green crops which brighten the landscape till the close
of February. In March comes the harvest time when all the crops are
gathered and stored.
Since the days of Moses, Egypt has been associated in the mind with
plague, pestilence, and famine. It can by no means be considered a
healthy country. Ophthalmia, a distressing disease of the eyes, prevails
to an alarming extent.
It is no uncommon thing to find not only the father, mother, and
children in a family suffering from the loss of sight in one or both
eyes, but even the cat, dog, and donkey may share the same affliction.
[Illustration: SUEZ CANAL.]
Lack of general care and cleanliness is believed to be the chief cause
of the disease. The strange apathy of the people, no doubt, has some
influence in spreading the disease; for they seem to accept blindness as
one of the decrees of Fate.
The world may well be proud of man's triumph over the forces of nature,
upon viewing the Suez Canal. The construction of it was a scheme from
the time of the greatest antiquity. It was left for France with her
enterprise and science to achieve this brilliant victory over nature,
and to add fame to her name through the accomplishment of so wonderful a
feat.
It is an undisputed fact, that in the days of ancient history the Red
Sea and the Mediterranean were indirectly connected by a canal. We can
with no certainty, however, fix the date of its construction. Some
writers place the date as far back as six hundred years before Christ.
The subject remains wrapped in mystery. Aristotle and Pliny ascribe its
construction to a half-mythical personage. Some writers believe the
Persian king, Darius, was its constructer. Others ascribe it to the
Ptolemies, so that the originator and maker remain unknown.
Such a canal did exist. It began about a mile and a half from Suez, and
extended in a northwesterly direction, through a remarkable series of
natural depressions, to ancient Bubastis on the eastern branch of the
Nile.
The canal was ninety-two miles long. Sixty miles of this extent had been
cut through by the labor of man. The width varied from one hundred and
eight to one hundred and sixty-five feet, the depth was fifteen feet.
Pliny, an ancient writer, declared it to have been thirty feet deep.
History does not state how long the canal was used. It finally became
choked with sand deposits and remained unused until the second century
A.D., when it was cleared for navigation.
Again, in course of time, it became practically useless from sand
deposits. It remained in this condition till the conquest of Egypt by
Amron. He had it reopened and named it "The Canal of the Prince of the
Faithful."
It remained open for nearly a century. In 767 A.D. the sands again
conquered, and in this condition it was left till the invasion of Egypt
by Napoleon Bonaparte. The attention of modern Europe was then directed
to it. A number of engineers were employed to survey it and report upon
it; but no result followed their report.
The subject continued to agitate the public mind from time to time; yet
no definite action took place till 1847, when France, England, and
Austria sent commissioners for the purpose of ascertaining accurately
the difference in level of the two seas, the Red and the Mediterranean.
Their report was somewhat astonishing. Instead of a difference of thirty
feet in level, as had been previously reported, the seas were found to
have precisely the same level. One strong difference was noted, namely,
a tide of six and a half feet at one end, and one and a half at the
other.
In 1853 an examination was made, but the results remained unchanged.
Various plans were projected. One commissioner, who did not believe it
possible to construct a canal, proposed a railroad from Cairo to Suez.
Some years later such a railroad was opened to the public. It was
devoted to the overland transportation of the British, Indian, and
Australian mails.
France, in her energy, was not satisfied with the report of the English
commissioner, and later caused to be published in a prominent journal, a
plan to connect the two seas by way of Alexandria and a point some six
miles below Suez.
In the year 1854 Count de Lesseps, a well-known member of the French
representatives in Egypt, attracted the attention of the public by the
originality of his plans. Two years later he obtained from the Pacha the
exclusive right to construct a ship canal from Tyneh to Suez.
Count de Lesseps' plan differed from all previous ones, for he purposed
cutting directly through the isthmus to Suez, rather than to follow an
oblique course and to connect the canal with the Nile.
The great masterpiece of his plan was to construct two harbors, one at
either end of the canal, Tyneh and Suez.
On the Mediterranean Sea he purposed carrying the harbor five miles out
from land. This he deemed necessary in order to obtain depth enough to
float a ship drawing twenty-three feet of water. Any natural harbor he
knew would be obstructed by the vast quantities of mud and sand brought
down annually by the Nile in its passage to the sea.
As many as thirty million cubic feet are thus carried down annually, to
be driven by the prevailing winds along the shore in an easterly
direction down towards the southern coast line of Palestine.
Count de Lesseps calculated that to construct such a harbor as he wished
would require from three to twelve million cubic yards of stone. Herein
lay the great difficulty; for there were no large stone quarries except
at a great distance from Tyneh.
De Lesseps planned to carry the pier at Suez three miles out from land.
He foresaw many difficulties before he could hope to see his plan
completed, yet these difficulties did not seem to him so insurmountable
as those on the Mediterranean Sea.
Naturally, his project met with much opposition; but finally public
opinion declared the plan, with some modifications, to be practical, and
that the construction of such a canal would be profitable to commerce. A
company was formed and at the end of five years the canal, at its
Mediterranean entrance at Port Said in the eastern portion of the Delta,
was finished.
From Port Said the canal had to cross about twenty miles of Lake
Menzaleh, a shallow body of salt water, which in general appearance
strongly suggested the lagoons of Venice. Beyond the lake much more
labor had to be expended, owing to the varying height of the land above
sea level. Some twenty-two miles of ground, varying in height from
thirty to eighty feet, had to be cut through.
The work of excavation was most laborious, owing to the nature of the
soil, which was often mixed with clay. The vast quantities of sand
seemed endless, even with the aid of dredging machines and elevators, in
excavating a canal as wide as that proposed--three hundred and
twenty-seven feet.
When the Bitter Lake region was reached the work of excavation was no
longer necessary, but much labor had to be expended in making an
embankment for the better security of the canal.
At the southern end of the Bitter Lake region the work of cutting was
again resumed as far as Suez, some thirty miles. This was, perhaps, as
difficult a task as any that had to be accomplished. So difficult was it
that the width of the canal was here reduced quite a little from that at
first planned.
About the middle of March, 1869, the waters of the Mediterranean were
successfully conducted into the Bitter Lake. Early in the fall of the
same year Count de Lesseps had the well-earned satisfaction of making a
steamer trip the entire length of the canal in about fifteen hours.
Thus had the skill and the energy of the French nation overcome the
doubts and the objections of the English as to the practicability and
possibility of so stupendous a piece of work.
It was a day of triumph when a formal notice of the public opening of
the canal, throughout its entire length, was issued by Count de Lesseps
in November, 1869. Several of the royal heads of Europe were invited to
attend. The Emperor of Austria and the Empress Eugenie were among those
present.
November 18, the imperial yacht _L'Aigle_, of France, with a fleet of
forty vessels, made the passage of the first part of the canal to
Ismailia in about eight hours and a half. At Ismailia the fleet was met
by four vessels recently arrived from the southern terminus of the canal
at Suez. The whole fleet set sail for Suez November 19, reaching the Red
Sea two days later.
Examination of the canal proved that the water was never less than
twenty feet in its most shallow parts. The usual depth was not less than
twenty-five feet. The canal is now open to navigation for vessels from
all nations. The usual time of transit is fifteen hours. The total cost
of this great achievement of mechanical skill was about sixty million
dollars.
The opening of the canal had naturally a great influence upon Suez.
Formerly it was but an insignificant little town built upon a small
corner of land near the northern arm of the Gulf of Suez. A railway
connected it with Cairo some seventy-six miles distant. The town was
walled on all sides except that facing the harbor. This harbor was
rather an insignificant one, though it had a fairly good quay. Great
improvements have been made. French and English houses and various
offices and warehouses have been erected in different localities, which
lend an air of thrift and enterprise to the town. The shops, or bazaars,
have become much more pretentious, and furnish such supplies as
clarified butter from Sinai, and fowls, grains, and vegetables from an
Egyptian province.
The town, in spite of its improvements, is not attractive. There is
little to please the eye in the wastes of burning sand that stretch out
on every side. Rain is seen so seldom here as to seem almost a
phenomenon. Sometimes intervals of more than three years elapse between
the rainfalls.
It is rather interesting, in considering the changes that have taken
place in the conditions of the earth's surface, to read that, in the
opinion of many learned men, the Isthmus of Suez, though now only a
dreary waste of sand, contained, at some remote time, the far-famed land
of Goshen. Accounts of its fertility have been handed down to us from
antiquity.
As we approach nearer the vicinity of the Nile we find, about fourteen
miles north of Belbeys, the ruins of the ancient city Bubastis, the
Pi-beseth of the Scriptures, the Tel Basta of modern times.
The name Bubastis is said to have been derived from that of the Egyptian
goddess. It is related, that upon the flight of the gods into Egypt,
Diana Bubastis changed herself into a cat. Since then these animals have
been held sacred.
Historians give interesting accounts of festivals held at Bubastis in
honor of the goddess. It was the custom to embalm all cats that died and
send them to the sacred city to be buried.
At the present time there is no trace of these unique tombs, but the
memory clings to these ancient sacred rites rather tenaciously, and many
of the present customs may be traced back to them. It but serves to show
the influence of superstition even in the light of modern days.
It cannot be denied that some of these customs may be regarded, however,
in the light of kindness to animals. Not so very many years ago quite a
large sum of money was bequeathed in Cairo for the support of homeless
and friendless cats.
Until within comparatively a few years pilgrimages were made to Mecca.
Each caravan had for its leader an old woman who was accompanied by a
number of cats. In all honor, she was named "The mother of cats."
Even at the present time a man laden with cats accompanies each band of
pilgrims to Mecca--a relic of the old time ceremony, which doubtless
grew out of the custom of carrying the embalmed bodies of cats to
Bubastis.
Herodotus tells us that the temple of the goddess at Bubastis was
considered one of the most beautiful of all the Egyptian temples, and
that it was the custom of the people in his age to make annual
pilgrimages to it.
Nothing remains now of the former beauty of the temple. A few stones of
the purest and finest grade of red granite are the only relics of its
past splendor.
There are some ruins and mounds which, doubtless, are remains of what
were once brick houses, and specimens of ancient pottery.