The Birmingham age-herald., 1907-10-20

, bra would be 100,0000O0 cubic yards, and, as 1 figured it then, it would just equal l a ditch three feet wide and three feet
 deep and long enough to go two times
 around this 25,000-mile globe with lO-00O i miles of ditch to spare
 This great ditch at Suez, however was so made that the dirt and sand taken out could be thrown on the banks and left there; that of the Culebra cut has to be
 carried by cars some miles away, and the greater part of the material is rock rather chan sand. 1t is so hard that most of fl has to be blasted out, and 1t re- quires heavy machinery to handle 1t.
 The suez canal was excaYated almost by hand. Twenty thousand and more of the Egyptian fellahs were employed upon 1t at d time. and they seooped up much of the dirt in their hands and carried it away in baskets. They were paid from
 10 10 1J cents a day at the start, and boys under 12 got only cents. After time they were not paid at all. The khedive agreed to furnish them, and they worked for the French under the lash just as the 1! Hebrews did for the Egyptians in the
 days of Pharaoh ages ago Our steam
 shoYels are estimated to be equal to the
 work of 509 men. We have some which will lift five wagon loads of earth per
 minute gouging it out Of the hills and
 dropping il on to the cars When tine
 canal construction is in full play we shall , have loo such shovels in operation both
 night and day. They will be equal to a force of 50.000 men. and we shall be able
 to handle our excavation more cheaply
 than the French did that of Suez. This
 will be so. notwithstanding our native
 labor will be paid from 10 to 20, and more times as much as the French paid the Egyptians Such Americans as are work oI Drp OattinV
 than they can make in the United States, and the native carpenters. painters and
 masons are receiving more per hour than the Egyptians received per day. With the
 present canai dredging machinery and steam shovels this work at Suez could
 probably be reproduced at one-half its actual cost and the actual cost was prob- ably quadrupled through the money spent in graft extravagance and high interest rates by the French and Egyptians in connection with it. When 1smail Pasha
 was forced from the throne he left Egypt in debt 10 the amount of S00,000,000 the most of which was directly Or indirectly caused by the canal.
 What Egypt Gets.
 one would think that Egypt ought to | receive a big revenue for the right of way | through her country and the canal which her money and her people practically built By the original concession with l Said Pasha she was to receive b per cent of the net profits for the entire term or the concession, which was ninety-nne years But after Ismail Pasha was de- posed the Egyptian government, finding itself without money or credit, sold this claim on the profits to the credit foncier
 of France for a little more than $4OO0,OOO and the only interest it now has in the canal is in the trade which the ships passing through bring to the country. Had Egypt retained that b per cent it would have received last year more than S2, ,0OO0O0 out of the tolls and within a few years it could have recouped itself for all Ismail Pasha's extravagances. During the term of the concession 1t could easily have repaid its debt to Turkey and
 could have made itself the richest coun- try of the world. As it is, the canal with all it's property, becomes the pos- session of Egypt in 1868, when the canal receipts at the present ratio of increase will be so enormous as to make this little country with it's comparatively small pop l ulation about the richest of all the world. Suez Canal by Moonlight.
 spent all of last night on the Suez canal It was the afternoon when our ship left Port Said, and as night fell we
 were in the heart of the Libyan desert The air was clear. and the scenes were weird but beautiful. The stars of the tropis, brighter by far than our stars at home made the heavens resplendent, and a great round moon of burning copper turned the famous waterway into a stream of molten silver. We could look out oyer the silent desert as We plowed our way through and now and then see a