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Story of an Emigrant.
3 35
to the Egyptian fellah, he has no comfort to renounce, his
whole life being made up of continual fasting and abstinence
from sheer necessity, so that it is comparatively easy for him
to be a good Mohammedan.
Having engaged a berth for the voyage from London to
India on the steamer City of Canterbury, which I was to
take about this time at the west end of the Suez canal, I
could not remain any longer in Egypt, but took the Austrian
steamer Apollo to Port Said, at the entrance to the Suez
canal. On September 25th, in the evening, I embarked on
the City of Canterbury where I made myself comfortable in
a fine state-room which had been reserved for me. It takes
two days to pass through the Suez canal, which runs
through a great sandy plain that was formerly covered by
the waters of the Red Sea. Among the many memorable
places which were pointed out to us during this passage was
also the spot where Moses is said to have conducted the
Israelites across the Red Sea. The work on the Suez canal
was commenced in 1859 and completed in 1869, and it cost
about $95,000,000. The length of the canal is one hundred
miles, its width at the surface of the water is three hundred
and twenty-eight feet, at the bottom seventy-two feet, and
its depth twenty-six feet. To a ship sailing from Sweden
or England to Bombay in India, the distance by way of the
Suez canal is five thousand miles shorter than by the passage
around the Cape of Good Hope.
I recollect an anecdote which dates from the opening of
the canal in 1869. On that occasion an irreverent speaker
is claimed to have said in toasting De Lesseps, the French
engineer who planned and executed the work, that the
latter was the only man who had improved upon the work of
the creator: He had connected the waters of the Red Sea
and those of the Mediterranean. Thus the significance of
ii
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