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Bird's-Eye View of the Suez Canal
(193) previously talked about, and having en- | greatest difficulties surmountable. "From listed the active coöperation of Napoleon the beginning of the work," says he, "there III, and having secured sufficient capital, was not a tent-keeper who did not consider he went about his work. Many still himself an agent of civilization." This, doubted the success of his undertaking; no doubt, was the one secret of his grand they did not have to doubt very long. success.
There is nothing so convincing as a fact; The great day arrived. On the 16th of as the French are in the habit of saying, November, 1868, there were one hundred "nothing succeeds like success." The and sixty vessels ready to pass the Canal. great engineer proved that the Canal At the last moment that evening it was could be made by simply making it. announced that an Egyptian frigate had When it was done people had no more run on one of the banks of the Canal, and to say. was hopelessly stuck there, obstructing The Canal commences at a place called the passage. She could not be towed off, Zagazig, and, receiving water from the and the united efforts of several hundred Nile, runs along much of the line of the men on the bank could not at first move ancient Canal of the Pharaohs. It is her. The Viceroy even proposed to blow navigable the whole. distance, the falls her up. It was only five minutes before being overcome by locks. The length of arriving at the site of the accident that an the Suez Canal is about one hundred Egyptian admiral signalled to Lesseps miles, of which seventy-five miles are from a little steam-launch that the Canal actual Canal, while for twenty-five miles it was free. passes through lakes, which afford water of sufficient depth, although the greater part required excavating. The width of the Canal, except at those places where it runs through high ground, is three hundred and twenty-five feet at the surface and seventy-two feet at the bottom, with a depth of twenty-six feet.
Grand Inauguration.
The Fair Empress.
A procession of one hundred and thirty vessels was formed, a steam yacht carry. ing on board the Empress of the French, the Emperor of Austria and the Viceroy.
The Empress told Lesseps at Ismaïlia that during the whole journey she had felt "as though a circle of fire were round her head," fearing that some disaster might mar the day's proceedings. Her pent-up feelings gave way at last; and when suc- Before leaving the Canal it will not be out of place to note the inauguration fête which must have been to M. de Lesseps cess was assured she retired to her cabin, the proudest day of a useful life. Two where sobs were heard by her devoted weeks before that event, the engineers friends. were for the moment baffled by a tempo- The Viceroy on that occasion enterrary obstruction-a mass of solid rock in tained six thousand foreigners, a large prothe channel. "Go," said the unconquer- portion of whom were of the most distinable projector, "and get powder at Cairo guished kind. Men of all nationalities -powder in quantities; and then, if we came to honor an enlightened ruler, and can't blow up the rock, we'll blow up our- witness the opening of a grand engineerselves." That rock was very soon in frag- ing work, which had been carried through ments! The spirit and enthusiasm of so many opposing difficulties; to applaud Lesseps made everything easy, and the the man of cool head and active brain, me GRAND OPENING OF THE SUEZ CANAL-PROCESSION OF SHIPS. (195) who had a few years before been by many the Viceroy had engaged five hundred jeered at, snubbed and thwarted. To cooks and one thousand servants, bring. suitably entertain the vast assemblage, ing many of them from Europe.
