pay a fine of nearly $10,000,000 because
his titular sovereign lord had ordered that Ismail's subjects should
not be murdered in the canal ditch. Each month a new obligation was
fastened upon suffering Egypt. Finally, when the canal was completed,
Ismail gave a great fete to celebrate its opening. Few festivals have
been so magnificent, none so extravagant. The celebration cost
$21,000,000. Verdi wrote the opera _Aida_ to order that Ismail might
give a box party one evening, and an opera house was built especially
for that purpose."

ENGLAND IN CONTROL

"But Ismail had signed too many notes of hand. The day of reckoning
came. Ismail sold his canal shares to the English government, and by
their purchase Benjamin Disraeli gave the British empire dominion over
the traffic between the East and the West. It was a bold stroke, and
it brought to an end the commercial aspirations of the French of the
Second Empire. The canal company still has its chief offices in Paris,
its clerks speak French, and its tolls are charged in francs, but
otherwise it is English.

"Ismail was dethroned and died in exile, his magnificence forgotten.
De Lesseps ventured on another canal project, was plunged into
disgrace, and died a mental wreck. Egypt, which once levied toll on
all the commerce passing between Orient and Occident, now watches the
trade ships pass by. The digging of the canal was the greatest blow
ever given to Egyptian commerce. But the losses of Ismail and De
Lesseps and Egypt make up the gain of the civilized world.

"Opened just forty years ago, its importance has increased with every
year, and its revenues are expanding each month. It cost $100,000,000,
half of which was spent in bribes and excessive discounts. With modern
machinery, such as is being used at Panama, it could have been built
for one-quarter as much. As an engineering problem it is to the Panama
Canal as a boy's toy block house to a forty-story skyscraper. How it
will compare with Panama as an avenue of commerce is a question to
which Americans anxiously await the answer."

The jubilee of the Suez Canal, work on which commenced in 1859, took
place on April 25, 1909. When I passed through in 1874 its depth was
about twenty-six feet; the present depth is about thirty-two and a half
feet, and improvements are now going on which will bring it to
thirty-four feet. The original width was seventy-one feet on the
bottom, and this has been gradu