Читать книгу Is a Ship Canal Practicable? онлайн

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Sir G. Wilkinson accounts for this uncertainty by a very plausible explanation. The sandy site of the canal required frequent excavation. These operations gave to successive kings the credit of having commenced the work which they only repaired.

The canal used by the Romans was afterward closed, and subsequently re-opened by the Caliph Omar. It was again closed for 134 years, when it was once more rendered navigable by El Hakim, A. D. 1000. It appears at this period to have extended to the Bitter Lakes before turning toward the Nile.

It again became filled with sand between the Nile and the Bitter Lakes. Mohammed Ali closed it entirely, after having lost 10,000 men from hunger, having hurried them into the desert without suitable preparation. At a more recent period, 1000 men died in one day from the same want of preparation, having been hurried into the desert, at the request of the English authorities, to work on the railroad between Suez and Cairo.

Pliny affirms that the ancient canal had a width of 100 feet and a depth of 40 feet as far as the Bitter Lakes, and the geological evidences indicate that the Bitter Lakes were once connected with the Red Sea. A stratum of salt, 8 to 10 feet thick, covers the bottom of the Lakes, and sea-shells are found in them and between them and Suez.