THROUGH THE SUEZ CANAL and engineered by French brains, but the bulk of the prof¬ its go to John Bull. When Ferdinand de Lesseps pro¬ posed to build it, the English sneered at the suggestion. When he got a concession from the Khedive, Said Pasha, they actually opposed its construction, doing everything they could to clog the work. The French received no help from other European nations, but they went on. They began digging in 1859, and just about ten years later the waters of the Mediterranean were allowed to flow into the Red Sea.

The opening of the Suez Canal cost Ismail Pasha more than twenty millions of dollars. Among the notables who were present was the Empress Eugenie, for whose enter¬ tainment a grand palace was fitted out at Cairo. My old dragoman told me that he had seen Eugenie during her visit to Egypt and that she had climbed the Pyramids, taken the fatiguing trip to the interior of the greatest of them, and had ridden on a camel to the Sphinx.

In the year following its opening some five hundred thousand tons of shipping went through the canal. In less than five years this had increased to more than two million tons and the gross income to almost five million dollars per annum. The British, then seeing that it was a good thing, cast about to find some method of control. They succeeded through Ismail Pasha, who was on the throne of Egypt. Old Ismail was one of the most extrava¬ gant tyrants who has ever squeezed money out of an oppressed people. He had aided the French in building the canal. In the allotment of shares, one hundred and seventy-six thousand out of the four hundred thousand had gone to the Egyptian government, so when the Khe¬ dive got hard up he concluded to put them on the market.

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