BEFORE THE OPENING.

SUEZ, November 10.

For the last four days I have been cruising about the Suez Canal. With the exception of one interruption, about which I shall speak presently, I have passed without a break from the Mediterranean to the Red Sea. The result of my observations has been to convince me that the Canal is a success. Let me, however, explain shortly what I mean by the word "success." If the opening of the Canal depended upon the permission of an Inspector of the Board of Trade, I think there would be very little chance of any traffic's passing over the route for weeks or months to come. I do not feel sanguine as to the prospect that the passage from sea to sea will be effected without hitch or breakdown on the 17th; nor should I be in the least surprised if after the opening the Canal had to be closed practically, if not nominally, in order to complete the excavations. But I have no doubt that ships drawing sixteen feet of

water can, and will, pass henceforth from the Mediterranean to the Red Sea. Whether the number of ships which will find it worth while to pay the charges required for the passage of the Canal will be sufficient to make the enterprise a remunerative one is a fact which experience alone can determine. M. de Lesseps himself calculates that the receipts for the first year will be twenty-five millions of francs; that of this amount five millions will be required for repairs, five for the working expenses of the Canal; while the fifteen millions left will suffice to pay a dividend of five per cent. On what data this calculation is based, and how far they are correct, is a matter on which I can express no opinion.

One striking testimony to the apparent success of the Canal is contained in the fact that, somewhat contrary to my expectations, there is very little to describe in passing through it. No doubt, given a certain experience in writing, it would be easy to make any number of columns out of the narrative of one's journey through the Canal as it would be to produce a like amount of letterpress about one's journey through the Watford Tunnel. But, when you have said that for some hundred miles you sail along a broad ditch, with high sand-banks on either side, over which at rare intervals you catch glimpses of a sandy

desert, you have given a picture of the Canal proper, the details of which you may arrange and re-arrange as you like, but of which the outline, foreground, and background must remain the same throughout. I think, therefore,

the best thing I can do is to write out in full such stray notes as I have taken down during my journey from Port Saïd to Suez.

Port Saïd, as seen from the Canal, is a bright, flourishing town, bearing, like all the towns on the Canal, a striking resemblance to the newly-settled cities of the prairie. Upon the map it possesses squares, boulevards, theatres, churches, and streets without end. In reality, its halffinished rows of houses end for the present in the desert. Still, there is room enough to build a city at the mouth of the Canal as large as Alexandria. The only serious obstacle to the prospects of Port Saïd as the site of a great city is the absence of fresh water. The town is supplied with drinking-water from the Canal des Eaux Douces at Ismailia, where two engines of 25-horse power are at work night and day pumping the fluid through iron pipes to Port Saïd, a distance of forty miles. Before long it will probably be necessary to prolong the canal which carries the waters of the Nile from Cairo to Ismailia to Port Saïd —a work which, like many other improvements needed to

complete the undertaking, can be effected only at a heavy outlay. The harbour, however, about whose construction such doubts have been expressed, is now an accomplished fact. Two converging stone piers have been built out into the Mediterranean from the coast, the longer and more westerly of the two being a mile and a half in length, the shorter about a mile and a quarter; the distance between the lighthouses at the ends of the two piers is half a mile. English and foreign naval officers who have inspected the harbour agree in saying that it is superior to Alexandria as a port; and the inner docks are now crowded with large large steamers and sailing vessels, the French flag being naturally predominant. Nor have there been any signs as yet of the predicted silting-up of the harbour. Along the western pier there is, indeed, a constant accretion of sand from the deposits of the Nile; and it is said that a sort of sandbank is thus gradually forming itself along the mole. But, at its present rate of deposit, very many years must elapse before the shoal reaches the mouth of the harbour; and in that event there will be no difficulty in extending the piers. So, at least, the partisans of the Canal declare. At any rate, the risk of the harbour of Port Saïd's being choked with sand is a remote one, and may be dismissed. from consideration for the time being.

From Port Saïd to Kantara, a distance of twenty-eight miles, the Canal runs through Lake Menzaleh. So the map states, and the statement is true, though not in the sense which the words would convey to ordinary apprehension. Lake Menzaleh is the largest of the sheets of water with which the charts of the isthmus are studded over; but then this lake is nothing more than a shallow lagoon, whose waters were of no practical service towards. the formation of the Canal, but were positively detrimental. Of all the portions of the undertaking, this one-M. de Lesseps assures me-was really the most arduous, though it attracted the least attention. A trough had to be dug through the bed of the lagoon; on either side this trough. high sandbanks had to be erected, and the difficulty of making a solid foundation for these sand walls was found to be extreme. The difficulty, however, has been surmounted; and there is no appearance of the embankment's being worn away by the action of the water, or of any filtration or mingling of the waters on either side. Throughout this section, from Port Saïd to Kantara, the Canal is finished. I do not mean by so saying that no further work may be required on this portion. All I mean is, that the contracts for cutting the section are held to be performed, that there are no works going on along it, and that the