AN ACCOUNT OF THE MAKING OF THE SUEZ CANAL Μία πραγματικά πολύ σημαντική περιγραφή των γεγονότων για την διάνοιξη της Διώρυγας του Σουέζ. ================================================= In 1854, Lesseps met Saïd Pacha in his tent on a plain between Alexandria and Lake Mareotis, a swamp in the desert. His Highness was in good humour, and understood Lesseps perfectly. A fine Arabian horse had been presented to him by Saïd Pacha a few days previously. After examining the plans and investigating the subject, the ruler of Egypt said, “I accept your plan. We will talk about the means of its execution during the rest of the journey. Consider the matter settled. You may rely on me.” He sent immediately for his generals, and made them sit down, repeating the previous conversation, and inviting them to give their opinion of the proposals of his friend. The impromptu counsellors were better able to pronounce on equestrian evolutions than on a vast enterprise. But Lesseps, a good horseman, had just before cleared a wall with his charger, and they, seeing how he stood with the Viceroy, gave their assent by raising their hands to their foreheads. The dinner-tray then appeared, and with one accord all plunged their spoons into the same bowl, which contained some first-class soup. Lesseps considered it, very naturally, as the most important negotiation he had ever made. Results speak for themselves. In 1854, there was not a fly in that hideous desert. Water, sheep, fowls, and provisions of all kinds had to be carried by the explorers. When at night they opened the coops of fowls, and let the sheep run loose, they did it with confidence. They were sure that next morning, in that desolate place, the animals dare not desert the party. “When,” says Lesseps, “we struck our camp of a morning, if at the moment of departure a hen had lurked behind, pecking at the foot of a tamarisk shrub, quickly she would jump up on the back of a camel, to regain her cage.” That desert is now peopled. There are three important towns. Port Saïd had not existed before: there is now what would be called a “city,” in America, on a much smaller basis of truth: it has 12,000 people. Suez, with 15,000 people, was not much more than a village previously. Ismaïlia, half-way on the route, has 5,000 or 6,000 of population. There are other towns or villages. A canal actually effecting a junction between the two seas viâ the Nile was made in the period of the Egyptian dynasties. It doubtless fulfilled its purpose for the passage of galleys and smaller vessels; history hardly tells us when it was rendered useless. Napoleon the First knew the importance of the undertaking, and appointed a commission of engineers to report on it. M. Lepère presented him a report on its feasibility, and Napoleon observed on it, “It is a grand work; and though I cannot execute it now, the day may come when the Turkish Government will glory in accomplishing it.” Other schemes, including those of eminent Turkish engineers, had been proposed. It remained to be accomplished in this century. The advantages gained by its construction can hardly be enumerated here. Suffice it to say that a vessel going by the Cape of Good Hope from London to Bombay travels nearly 6,000 miles over the ocean; by the Suez Canal the distance is 3,100, barely more than half the distance. To tell the history of the financial troubles which obstructed the scheme would be tedious to the reader. At last there was an International Commission appointed, which cost the Viceroy of Egypt £12,000, and yet no single member took a farthing for his services. The names are sufficient to prove with what care it had been selected. On the part of England, Messrs. Rendel and MacClean, both eminent engineers, with, for a sufficiently good reason, Commander Hewet of the East India Company’s service, who for twenty-seven years had been making surveys in the Red Sea and Indian Ocean. France gave two of her greatest engineers, Messrs. Renaud and Liessou: Austria, one of the greatest practical engineers in the world, M. de Negrelli; Italy, M. Paléocapa; Germany, the distinguished Privy Councillor Lentzé; Holland, the Chevalier Conrad; Spain, M. de Montesino. They reported entirely in favour of the route. A second International Congress followed. The Viceroy behaved so magnificently to the scientific gentlemen of all nations who composed the commission, that M. de Lesseps thanked him publicly for having received them almost as crowned heads. The Viceroy answered gracefully, “Are they not the crowned heads of science?” At last the financial and political difficulties were overcome. In 1858, an office was opened in Paris, into which money flowed freely. Lesseps tells good-naturedly some little episodes which occurred. An old bald-headed priest entered, doubtless a man who had been formerly a soldier. “Oh! those English,” said he, “I am glad to be able to be revenged on them by taking shares in the Suez Canal.” Another said, “I wish to subscribe for ‘Le Chemin de Fer de l’Ile de Suède’” (The Island of Sweden Railway!) It was remarked to him that the scheme did not include a railway, and that Sweden is not an island. “That’s all the same to me,” he replied, “provided it be against the English, I subscribe.” Lord Palmerston, whose shade must feel uneasy in the neighbourhood of the Canal, could not have been more prejudiced. At Grenoble, a whole regiment of engineers—naturally men of intelligence and technical knowledge, clubbed together for shares. The matter was not settled by even the free inflow of money. The Viceroy had been so much annoyed by the opposition shown to the scheme, that it took a good deal of tact on the part of its promoter to make things run smoothly. For the first four years, Lesseps, in making the necessary international and financial arrangements, travelled 30,000 miles per annum. At length the scheme emerged from fog to fact. The Viceroy had promised 20,000 Egyptian labourers, but in 1861 he begged to be let out of his engagement. He had to pay handsomely for the privilege. Although the men were paid higher than they had ever been before, their labour was cheap: it cost double or treble the amount to employ foreigners. The Canal, in its course of a shade over 100 miles, passes through several salt marshes, “Les Petits Bassins des Lacs Amers,” in one of which a deposit of salt was found, seven miles long by five miles wide. It also passes through an extensive piece of water, Lake Menzaleh. At Lake Menzaleh the banks are very slightly above the level of the Canal, and from the deck of a big steamer there is an unbounded view over a wide expanse of lake and morass studded with islets, and at times gay and brilliant with innumerable flocks of rosy pelicans, scarlet flamingoes, and snow-white spoonbills, geese, ducks, and other birds. The pelicans may be caught bodily from a boat, so clumsy are they in the water, without the expenditure of powder and shot. Indeed, the sportsman might do worse than visit the Canal, where, it is almost needless to state, the shooting is open to all. A traveller, who has recently passed through the Canal en route to India, writes that there are alligators also to be seen. The whole of the channel through Lake Menzaleh was almost entirely excavated with dredges. When it was necessary to remove some surface soil before there was water enough for the dredges to float, it was done by the natives of Lake Menzaleh, a hardy and peculiar race, quite at home in digging canals or building embankments. The following account shows their mode of proceeding:—“They place themselves in files across the channel. The men in the middle of the file have their feet and the lower part of their legs in the water. These men lean forward and take in their arms large clods of earth, which they have previously dug up below the water with a species of pickaxe called a fass, somewhat resembling a short, big hoe. The clods are passed from man to man to the bank, where other men stand with their backs turned, and their arms crossed behind them, so as to make a sort of primitive hod. As soon as each of these has had enough clods piled on his back, he walks off, bent almost double, to the further side of the bank, and there opening his arms, lets his load fall through to the ground. It is unnecessary to add that this original métier requires the absence of all clothing.”90 Into the channel thus dug the dredges were floated. One of the machines employed deserves special mention. The long couloir (duct) was an iron spout 230 feet long, five and a half wide, and two deep, by means of which a dredger working in the centre of the channel could discharge its contents beyond the bank, assisted by the water which was pumped into it. The work done by these long-spouted dredges has amounted to as much as 120,000 cubic yards a-piece of soil in a month. By all kinds of ingenious appliances invented for the special needs of the occasion, as much as 2,763,000 cubic yards of [pg 113]excavation were accomplished in a month. M. de Lesseps tells us that “were it placed in the Place Vendôme, it would fill the whole square, and rise five times higher than the surrounding houses.” It would cover the entire length and breadth of the Champs Elysées, and reach to the top of the trees on ei Port Saïd, which owes its very existence to the Canal, is to-day a port of considerable importance, where some of the finest steamships in the world stop. All the through steamers between Europe and the East—our own grand “P. & O.” (Peninsular and Oriental) line, the splendid French “Messageries,” the Austrian Lloyd’s, and dozens of excellent lines, all make a stay here of eight or ten hours. This is long enough for most travellers, as, sooth to say, the very land on which it is built had to be “made,” in other words, it was a tract of swampy desert. It has respectable streets and squares, docks, quays, churches, mosques, and hotels. The outer port is formed by two enormous breakwaters, one of which runs straight out to sea for a distance of 2,726 yards. They have lighthouses upon them, using electricity as a means of illumination. Messrs. Borel and Lavalley were the principal contractors for the work. The ingenious machinery used cost nearly two and a half million pounds (actually £2,400,000), and the monthly consumption of coal cost the Company £40,000. The distance from Port Saïd to Suez is 100 miles. The width of the Canal, where the banks are low, is about 328 feet, and in deep cuttings 190 feet. The deep channel is marked with buoys. The mole at the Port Saïd (Mediterranean) end of the Canal stretches out into the sea for over half a mile, near the Damietta branch of the Nile. This helps to form an artificial harbour, and checks the mud deposits which might otherwise choke the entrance. It cost as much as half a million. In the Canal there are recesses—shall we call them sidings, as on a railway?—where vessels can enter and allow others to pass. The scenery, we must confess, is generally monotonous. At Ismaïlia, however, a town has arisen where there are charming gardens. We are told that “it seems only necessary to pour the waters of the Nile on the desert to produce a soil which will grow anything to perfection.” Here the Viceroy built a temporary palace, and M. de Lesseps himself has a châlet. At Suez itself the scenery is charming. From the height, on which is placed another of the Khedive’s residences, there is a magnificent panorama in view. In the foreground is the town, harbour, roadstead, and mouth of the Canal. To the right are the mountain heights—Gebel Attákah—which hem in the Red Sea. To the left are the rosy peaks of Mount Sinai, so familiar to all Biblical students as the spot where the great Jewish Law was given by God to Moses; and between the two, the deep, deep blue of the Gulf. Near Suez are the so-called “Wells of Moses,” natural springs of rather brackish water, surrounded by tamarisks and date-palms, which help to form an oasis—a pic-nic ground—in the desert. Dean Stanley has termed the spot “the Richmond of Suez.” Before leaving the Canal on our outward voyage, it will not be out of place to note the inauguration fête, which must have been to M. de Lesseps the proudest day of a useful life. Two weeks before that event, the engineers were for the moment baffled by a temporary obstruction—a mass of solid rock in the channel. “Go,” said the unconquerable projector, “and get powder at Cairo—powder in quantities; and then, if we can’t blow up the rock, we’ll blow up ourselves.” That rock was very soon in fragments! The spirit and bonhomie of Lesseps made everything easy, and the greatest difficulties surmountable. “From the beginning of the work,” says he, “there was not a tent-keeper who did not consider himself an agent of civilisation.” civilisation.” This, no doubt, was the great secret of his grand success.
Posted on: Fri, 18 Jul 2014 20:49:09 +0000
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