sary to enable ships to enter the canal in bad
weather. It is clear that a bar would immediately be formed; and almost
as certain that any break-water but a floating one would soon be joined
to the continent by a neck of sand. If it be possible to form any part
at this point on the Egyptian coast, it could only be done at an
enormous cost; and our information is at present too imperfect to
warrant our entering on the subject. The question requires a more
profound scientific examination than it has yet undergone.

[1] Enquiry into the Means of Establishing a Ship Navigation between
the Mediterranean and the Red Sea, with a Map. By Captain Veitch, R.E.,
F.R.S. Communications with India, China, &c.; Observations on the
Practicability and Utility of Opening a Communication between the Red
Sea and the Mediterranean, by a Ship Canal through the Isthmus of Suez,
with Two Maps. By Arthur Anderson.

One of the ablest scholars who has written on the subject of this canal,
has advanced the opinion, that Nekos, the king of Egypt, who, Herodotus
mentions, undertook the completion of this work, borrowed the idea of
his project from the Greeks. Monsieur Letronne conjectures that he only
imitated the plan, which is attributed to Periander, of having designed
to cut through the isthmus of Corinth. Willing as we are to concede a
great deal to Grecian genius, we are compelled to protest against the
probability of the Egyptians having borrowed any project of
_canalization_ from the Greeks. We own we should entertain very great
doubts whether Periander had ever uttered so much as a random phrase
about cutting through the isthmus of Corinth, were it not that there are
some historical grounds for believing that he was a professed imitator
of Egypt. He had a nephew named Psammetichus, who must have been so
called after the father of Nekos.[1] All projects for making canals in
Greece had a foreign origin, from the time Periander imitated Egyptian
fashions, down to the days of the Bavarian regency, which talked about
making a ship canal from the Piraeus to Athens, and instructed a
commission to draw up a plan of canalization for the Hellenic kingdom,
where every thing necessary is wanting--even to the water. The earlier
projectors who proposed to cut through the isthmus of Corinth, after
Periander, were the Macedonian adventurer Demetrius Poliorcetes, and
the Romans, Julius Caesar, Caligula, Nero, and Herodes Atticas.[2] We
should not be surpri