SIT'EZ, until recently, a small, ill-built, wretched-looking town, on an angle of land near the northern extremity of the,gulf of Suez, 76 m. e. of Cairo, with which it is con nected by railway. The pop. was officially returned, in 1872, as 13,498. It is walled on all sides but that toward the sea, has an indifferent harbor, but a tolerably good quay. Suez of late has been greatly improved. English and French houses, offices, and ware houses have been erected in every direction, and the bazaars are assuming a respectable appearance. These bazaars are provided with clarified butter from Sinai, with fowls, grain, and vegetables from the Egyptian province of Sharkijeh, and with wood, dates, and cotton. Rain falls but seldom, sometimes not once in three years. All around stretches a burning waste of sands. Suez owes its modern prosperity to the establish ment of what is known as the overland route (q.v.) to India, in consequence of which a large portion of the traffic between England (and other European countries) and the. east passes through the place; and to the opening of the Suez canal in 1869. For a long time previous to the establishment of the overland route, Suez had been in a state of complete decay, although, at a yet earlier period—previous, in fact, to the discovery of the sea route to India by the cape of Good Hope—it was a flourishing emporium of the prod ucts of east and west. A salt manufactory was recently established here by the Egypt ian government, and from May to July, 1875, six thousand tons of salt were sent to India.
The GULF or SUEZ is the western and larger of the two branches into which the Red sea divides toward its northern extremity, and washes on the w. the coasts of Egypt, on the e. those of the Sinaitic peninsula. Extreme length, 200 m.; average breadth, about 20 miles. The shores are sometimes low, barren, and sandy wastes, sometimes bold and rocky headlands.
The ISTHMUS OF SUEZ is a neck of land 72 m. in width at its narrowest part, extend ing from the gulf of Suez on the s. to the Mediterranean on the n., and connecting the continents of Asia and Africa. It embraces within its limits (according to the com monly received opinion) the fertile Goshen (q.v.) of antiquity; but it is now a wretched uninhabitable waste, consisting of mingled sand and sandstone, interrupted here and there with salt swamps or lakes, but almost entirely destitute of fresh water. The main interest that attached to this region, iu recent times, was, whether or not—since Egypt was on the great highway to India and China—it was practicable to cut a ship-canal through the isthmus. We shall here briefly indicate the main steps that were taken to have this important question solved in a satisfactory manner.
It is certain that, in ancient times, a canal connecting (indirectly) the two seas did exist. At what period it was constructed is not so certain. Herodotus ascribes its pro jection and partial execution to Pharaoh Necho (about 600 years n.c.); Aristotle, Strabo, and Pliny less felicitously fix on the half-mythical Sesostris as its originator. The honor of its completion is assigned by some to Darius, king of Persia, by others to the Ptole mies. It began at about a mile and a half from Suez, and was carried in a north-west erly direction, through a remarkable series of natural depressions, to Bubastis, on the Pelusiac or eastern branch of the Nile. Its entire length was 92 m. (of which upward of 60 were cut by human labor) its width from 108 to 165 ft., and its depth 15 (Pliny says 30) feet. How' long it continued to be used, we cannot tell; but at length it became choked up with sand, was restored by Trajan early in the 2d c. A.D., but again became unusable from the same cause, and so remained till the conquest. of Egypt by Amrou, the Arab general of the calif Omar, who caused it to be reopened, and named it the " Canal of the Prince of the Faithful," under which designation it continued to be employed for upward of a century, but was finally blocked up by the unconquerable sands, 767 A.D. In this condition it has ever since remained. The attention of Europe was first turned to it in modern times during the invasion of Egypt by Bonaparte, who caused the isthmus to be surveyed by a body of engineers, who arrived at the opinion that the level of the Mediterranean is 30 ft. below that of the Red sea at Suez, an opinion which a subsequent survey proved to be erroneous. From this time, the question con tinned to be agitated at intervals, especially by the French, and various plans were pro posed, but nothing definite was arrived at till 1847, when France, England, and Austria sent out a commission to measure accurately the levels of the two seas. The commis sioners, M. Talabot, Mr. Robert Stephenson, and signor Nigrelli, ascertained that, instead of a difference of 30 ft., the two seas have exactly the same mean level. The only
noticeable difference was, that there is a tide of 6i ft. at the one end and 1i ft. at the other. Another examination leading to similar results was made in 1853. Mr. Stephen son expressed himself very strongly against the feasibility of a canal, that is to say, a canal of such dimensions as would suit the requirements of modern commerce, and planned, instead, a railway from Cairo to Suez, which was opened (1858), and which now conveys overland all our Indian and Australian mails. The French, however, were not satisfied with Mr. Stephenson's conclusions, and M. Talabot, on his return to Europe, published in the Revue des Deux Nondes a plan for connecting the two seas by way of Alexandria and Suez (or rather a point 6 m. below Suez), for a description of which we have not space. In 1854 a new experimenter appeared in the person of M. de Lesseps, a member of the French diplomatic service in Egypt, who (1856) obtained from the pasha the "concession," i.e., the exclusive privilege of forming a ship-canal from Tyneh (near the ruins of ancient Pelusium) to Suez. The peculiarity of M. de Lesseps's plan lay in this, that, instead of following an oblique course, and uniting his canal with the Nile, as the ancients had done, and as all the modern engineers had thought of doing, he pro posed to cut a canal right through the isthmus in a straight line to Suez. This canal was to have a minimum width at the surface of 262 ft., and at the bottom of 144 ft., with a depth of 22-i- ft.; and at each end there was to be a sluice-lock formed, 330 ft. long by 70 wide. By taking advantage of the tides at Suez, it was hoped that an additional depth of 3 or 4 ft. might be obtained. But the colossal feature of M. de Lesseps's plan was the artificial harbors which he proposed to execute at the two ends, Tyneh and Suez. That at the Mediterranean end was to be carried out 5 m. in order to obtain a permanent depth of water for a ship drawing 23 ft., on account of the enormous quantity of mud-sand which the Nile annually pours out (30,000,000 cubic yards, it is ,said), and which the prevalent wind drives eastward along the shore toward the southern coast of Palestine. The quantity of stone required to construct this harbor has been calculated variously at from 3 to 12 million cubic yards, and there are no stone quarries except at a great dis tance from Tyneh I pier at Suez was to be carried out 3 m., and in other respects the difficulties, though great, were not, as on the Mediterranean coast, almost insur mountable. The English for political, perhaps, as well as for practical reasons, looked with aversion on M. de Lesseps's scheme; but in 1855, the question was again taken up in an international spirit, a new European commission was appointed, which reported that M. de Lesseps's scheme, somewhat modified, was practicable, and that a canal might profitably be constructed. The result of the report was the formation of a joint-stock company, with a subscribed capital of £8,000,000 (afterward increased), in which Said, the pasha of Egypt, took a large number of shares, and made large concessions of land; and the work was accordingly begun. The canal was to be dredged through lake Men• zaleh, which runs far into the land directly toward Suez, to be connected with lake Temsah, the Bitter lake, and other marshy swamps, and so with Suez. Only a third of the way required to be excavated through the sands and rocks of the desert. As early as Dec., 1864, the Mediterranean and the Red sea had been connected. The communi cation, however, was not throughout by the permanent maritime canal, but simply by a fresh-water canal of no great width or depth. In April, 1865, the works, at the request of M. de Lesseps, were visited by another scientific commission, who reported more favorably of the scheme than was expected in England. They stated that the "construc tion of a ship-canal across the isthmus is only a question of time and money," and they added that three years would suffice for the completion of the various contracts con nected with the undertaking.
The canal was formally opened in Nov., 1869. An account of the opening, and a description of the canal in its completed state, is given under SUEZ CANAL.
The hostility of the British nation to the canal faded away with its successful completion and the advantages which it afforded to British commerce. The fears expressed at the opening of the canal, that the trade of the east would be diverted from Great Britain as a center, were found by statistics to be as groundless. In 1875 the British government purchased, for £4,000,000, the khedive of Egypt's shares in the canal, which amounted to 176,602 out of 400,000. These shares give no returns to their owner till 1894, the khedive having alienated the dividends till that period in favor of the company.