Читать книгу Is a Ship Canal Practicable? онлайн

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M. Lepere asserted the practicability of a ship canal along the line of the ancient canal from Suez to the Nile, as far as the Bitter Lakes. From thence its course has to proceed to the Pelusiac branch of the Nile. Here, on the sea, it encounters the accumulating banks and bars of the Nile, one of the two very serious obstacles to the execution and permanent value of a ship canal between the two seas.

The project of a canal uniting the Red Sea and the Mediterranean appears to have been suggested by M. de Lesseps to Said Pacha, the Viceroy of Egypt, in 1854. The company was definitely formed in 1869.

It is not very easy to estimate the important effects of opening this route to the maritime States of Europe.

Lord Palmerston, acting in the interest of England, constantly opposed the design. He at once perceived that the restoration of trade to the Levantine ports would seriously disturb the commercial equilibrium. All the ingenious devices of a clever lawyer in conducting a bad case were employed by English diplomacy in order to arrest the operations of M. de Lesseps.