CAIRO TO KISUMU The actual cost was probably quadrupled through the money spent in graft, extravagance, and high interest rates by the French and Egyptians in connection with it. When Ismail Pasha was forced from the throne he left Egypt in debt to the amount of five hundred million dollars, most of which was directly or indirectly caused by canal expenditures.

One would think that Egypt ought to receive a big revenue for the right of way through her country and for the canal which her money and her people practically built. By the original concession with Said Pasha she was to receive fifteen per cent, of the net profits for the entire term of the concession, which was ninety-nine years.

But after Ismail Pasha was deposed, the Egyptian govern¬ ment, finding itself without money or credit, sold this claim on the canal profits to the Credit Foncier of France for a little more than four million dollars, and the only interest it now has in the canal is in the trade which the ships passing through bring to the country. Had Egypt retained that fifteen per cent, it would have been receiving millions of dollars a year from the tolls, and within a short time it could have recouped itself for all Ismail Pasha's extravagances. During the term of the concession it could easily have repaid its debt to Turkey, and could have made itself one of the richest countries of the world. As it is, the canal, with all its property, be¬ comes the possession of Egypt in 1968, when the receipts at the present ratio of increase will be so enormous as to make it, in proportion to its population, a Croesus among the nations of the world.

I spent all of last night on the Suez Canal. It was afternoon when our ship left Port Said, and as the darkness 214