The Suez Canal

These considerations apply, with equal force, to the supposed danger of the obstruction of the Suez Canal by the drifting of the desert sands. The winds across the isthmus are almost uniformly from the north, and they swept it clean of flying sands long ages since. The traces of the ancient canal between the Red Sea and the Nile are easily followed for a considerable distance from Suez. Had the drifts upon the isthmus been as formidable as some have feared and others have hoped, those traces would have been obliterated, and Lake Timsah and the Bitter Lakes filled up, many centuries ago. The few particles driven by the rare east and west winds toward the line of the canal, would easily be arrested by plantations or other simple methods, or removed by dredging. The real dangers and difficulties of this magnificent enterprise—and they are great—consist in the nature of the soil to be removed in order to form the line, and especially in the constantly increasing accumulation of sea sand at the southern terminus by the tides of the Red Sea, and at the northern, by the action of the winds. Both seas are shallow for miles from the shore, and the excavation and maintenance of deep channels, and of capacious harbors with easy and secure entrances, in such localities, is doubtless one of the hardest problems offered to modern engineers for practical solution.