Читать книгу The Times Great Events - Группа авторов - Страница 29
Оглавление19 November 1869
The estimates of the cost of the undertaking which he [Ferdinand de Lesseps] himself had put forward had been doubled, and on every occasion when it became apparent that the money which had been provided was insufficient, the burden had been cast upon him of persuading the capitalists of the world to have faith in his promise, and to throw their gold into the sands where so much had been lost. All this he had gone through in the strength of his belief. Even at last, when the moment of realization seemed imminent, there arose a rumour of a new difficulty. The most careful watch that had been possible had been insufficient for the Arab and Egyptian workmen, and it was announced that a rock had been discovered in the Canal between Ismailia and Suez which would be a fatal impediment to navigation until its removal was effected. But on Wednesday the thing was done. The morning arose big with the promise of the coming event, yet, if we judge the character of M. DE LESSEPS aright, it found him undisturbed. He had been too long possessed of the certainty of faith to be tremulous on the day of fulfilment. The visitors were doubtless moved by different feelings. Some of them were not impossibly anxious for their own safety; others were flurried and nervous about the success of the scheme; all must have scanned narrowly the banks and sidings as they performed the fifty miles from Port Said to Ismailia. There is no country in the world which has seen stranger processions than the Desert between Suez and the Mediterranean, yet this most ancient of lands saw something totally unlike all that it had ever seen before in the procession of Wednesday. Forty steamers followed one another in single file along the narrow water-way. The breadth is not sufficient for craft such as were there to pass one another with safety, except at the basin stations, occurring every seven or eight miles. One after another, therefore, they came, and for the first half of the journey from Port Said to Ismailia the Canal or Channel they followed ran through the shallow waters of Lake Menzaleh. We can well imagine the watchful looks that were cast right and left as the procession passed on, and when it crossed the track from Syria to Egypt and the travellers saw nothing but sand on each side, the occupants of the hindermost of the fleet must have become more than ever interested in observing the effect of the wash the vessels before them made on the sand-banks bounding the waterway. After eight hours’ careful journey, however, the fifty miles to Ismailia were accomplished, the fleet drew up in the anchorage of Lake Timsah, where the vessels from Suez awaited them, and a great feeling of relief and thankfulness arose in the minds of all, except in the mind of M. DE LESSEPS, whose previous assurance of success excluded exultation.
In 1854, Ferdinand de Lesseps, a French diplomat who had served in Cairo, used his good standing with Egypt’s ruler, the Khedive Ismail Pasha, to obtain the right to build a canal through the isthmus of Suez to link the Mediterranean with the Red Sea.
Despite scepticism about its viability, not least from British politicians and investors, the 120-mile (193-kilometre) long canal was constructed within a decade. Its opening was marked by ceremonies including fireworks and a banquet attended by the Empress Eugénie of France, although Verdi did not (as often believed) write his opera Aida for the occasion but for the inauguration of Cairo’s Opera House. De Lesseps himself, then 64, celebrated by marrying his second wife, who was 21. He subsequently tried but failed to build a Panama Canal.
With shipping no longer forced to sail around Africa and to brave the Atlantic, journey times between, for instance, Britain and India were greatly reduced. The strategic and economic importance of the Canal led Britain and France to invade Egypt in 1882 to restore the power of the Khedive following a rebellion by nationalists. (See Suez.)
