Year Steamers Net Tonnage Receipts in Francs

1871 765 761,467 7,595,385

1876 1,457 2,069,771 27,631,455

1881 2,727 4,136,779 47,193,880

1886 3,100 5,767,655 54,771,075

1891 4,206 8,699,020 83,421,500

1896 3,407 8,594,307 79,652,175

1901 3,699 10,823,840 100,386,397

1906 3,780 11,750,000 103,700,000

The Suez company pays enormously, and more than half the current
earnings go to the possessors of the several grades of bonds and
shares. Great Britain is the preponderating user of the canal, with
Germany a poor second. Holland, due to proprietorship of Dutch India, is
third in the list, and the nation of De Lesseps is fourth. The United
States stands near the foot of the roll of patrons, being only
represented by an occasional warship, transport going to or coming from
the Philippines, or a touring yacht. It is a pathetic fact that our
country, paramount producer of the world, has not been represented for
nearly a decade by the Stars and Stripes over a commercial craft in the
Suez canal. Cargoes go or come between American ports and those of the
Orient, of course, but they are borne in British bottoms or those having
register in other foreign nations. Fifteen or sixteen years ago England
was represented in Suez statistics by seventy-five per cent. of the
total traffic; but her proportion has decreased until it is now under
sixty per cent. Kaiser William making a systematic fight for new markets
in China and throughout Australasia, the statistics of Germany in canal
traffic are slowly advancing.

At present, with the Suez enterprise in operation thirty-eight years,
the average number of ships using the waterway is approximately ten each
day. This is one vessel every two hours and thirty-five minutes during
the twenty-four hours--meaning an eastbound craft every five hours and
ten minutes, and a westbound every five hours and ten minutes.

The idea of wedding the Atlantic and the Pacific must have been original
with the first observant and intelligent person viewing the two oceans
from the hills of the Central-American isthmus. Presumably he was a
Spanish adventurer, and the time practically four hundred years ago. A
century before the landing on American soil of the Pilgrim Fathers,
explorers were informing Charles V of Spain of the opportunity supplied
by nature to connect the waters of the t