THROUGH THE SUEZ CANAL have changed my route to the Suez Canal, Red Sea, and Indian Ocean.

All travel in East Africa was reorganized when the Suez Canal was built About three thousand years ago, when the Phoenicians had settled on the north coast, founding Carthage, they had pushed their way into Egypt and even into Abyssinia, and a little later had come down along the east coast of the Indian Ocean, forming settle¬ ments probably as far south as Mozambique. After Carthage was conquered by the Romans, these East African settlements were seized by the Arabs, who coloniz¬ ed the coast of the Indian Ocean as far south as Sofala.

Later still, under the Ptolemies, Greek traders visited many of these Arab settlements, and in the twelfth century Zanzibar first appeared on European maps of the world as one of the Mohammedan colonies. Then Columbus discovered America and Vasco da Gama, who was the first to round the Cape of Good Hope, anchored at Mom¬ basa in 1498. Until the Suez Canal was constructed, the only sea route from Europe to the ports of the Indian Ocean was by the Cape of Good Hope. There are ships still making the voyage that way, but for the most part they end their trips at one of the eastern ports of South America.

The ships that formerly went to China and India had to go around Africa, the trip to Bombay from London being over eleven thousand miles. By the Suez Canal it is just about seven thousand miles, making a saving of four thousand miles, or a thousand miles more than the distance from New York to Liverpool.

I have before me the figures giving the traffic of the Suez Canal in a typical year. Four thousand vessels and 209