40 THE STORY OF THE KHEDIVATE.

/'sell them a few acres close to Port Said. The Government proposed to re-sell at the price they had been called upon to pay under the award. The Company, however, treated the offer as absurd, on the plea that the land was absolutely worthless in itself, and finally paid for it only a small fraction of the price they had fixed themselves as its \ value, when they had been obliged to forego their y title to its possession. Never yet, in as far as I am / acquainted with financial history, has there been a / concession granted, so profitable to the grantee, so I costly to the grantor, as that given by Said Pasha to the Suez Canal Company.

/ Baedeker's handbook for Egypt, which is gene-. fj/ rally very accurate in its figures, estimates the cost ( of constructing the Canal at ; 19,000,000, of which \ amount ;i 2,800,000 was paid by public subscription, J ;3,ooo,ooo by the award, while the balance was provided by the Khedive. As, however, Ismail took over the ;4,ooo,ooo of shares allotted to Said Pasha, or rather to M. de Lesseps on Said's behalf, he practically contributed about one-half of the original capital. He also, in order to facilitate a loan required to complete the Canal, agreed to forego for twentyfive years all interest on the above shares. It is very difficult to calculate the exact amount in actual \ cash Egypt lost by this transaction, but the fact J remains that Ismail's liberality at the expense of / Egypt enabled the Company to raise a very large sum of money it would have had extreme difficulty