The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1898-01-21
THE SUEZ CANAL.
An Unattractive Ditch Cut Through
u MOnstrOus Desert.
J. w. Stevens. in London Mail,


G. w. Stevens, in London Mail.
One lazy irrecoverable day had spent in
the bawling streets of Port Said waiting
for ship to take me down the canal to
Suez.
Liner, freighter or dredger, it was all one
to me, if only something that could float
would let me aboard. Only, of course,
ships came up and up, but none went down.
So this morning l rose up betimes, wasted
no minutes in the usual mosquito hunt and
got me to the shed which Fort Said calls
railway station. The little toy train of the
Suez Canal Company was just thinking of
starting for Ismailia. After all, could see
the famous canal from that
l did see the famous canal. For three
hours the train tram never went out of a
walk, and all the time l saw the canal.
Never | suppose, has any single work of
man upset the balance of the world like the
Suez canal; it has made and unmade men,
cities, nations But to look at it is just a
narrow ditch, cut through sheer wilder
ness of sand. On the Asiatic side the brown
desert stretches away, fiat, empty, endless.
On the Egyptian a little ribbon strives to
relieve the aching barrenness with little
green. A ditch of sweet water runs be-
tween canal and railway, and with it's aid
a few dwa-f trees and bushes struggle
above ground; but, even so. they attain only
to gray, not green. The Suez canal
goes, on mile after mile, unbending, through
desolation.
The same red and white buoys mark the
central channel; you pass the same gray
patient dredgers, scooping up silt and spew-
ing 1t out along what looks like a section
of a broken suspension bridge in to it's des-
ert again. An ocean steamer hardly seems
to move, for it must make wash. lest
the banks fall in; it looks as if it had
strayed into a place too small for it, as a
salmon might look in a goldfish tank and
could not find it's way out again. The sta
tons you pass are abodes of the canal
officials and nothing else. few palms
and cactus show above their compounds
few natives light the eye with a blaze of
blue and yellow and crimson garments. But
the desert runs up to the very fence; that
past, you are forlorn in the dead sand
again.
AT length, far off, as the canal widens to
blue lake, you see a mass of dark green.
1t is too big for a Suez Company bungalow;
it is Ismaiia. Pick your way through the
black wells of women and amber caftans of
children, who sit peacefully on the platform
fresh your starved eye with greenery in
deed. Ismailia is all groves of yellow
beaned acacia trees-the dust-b stems
twining bare and serpentine below the
leaves weaving into a thick canopy over
head. From walled gardens droop many
flowers-white stars, scarlet buttons, purple
cups. 1t is a little French town, well laid
out, symmetrical, trim. 1t is almost too
symmetrical, too trim to be real; it looks
like a model Egyptian town, ready to go on
tour. You could almost fancy yourself at
Earlscourt, except for the emptiness of it,
1t was built on the new canal to be thriv-
ing town, a bathing resort, the halfway
house to Cairo But now it Is only a place
where you lunch on the way from Port
Said to Cairo; it precariously supports a
small population of railway porters. Ismai-
liza is almost as dead as the desert.