Los Angeles herald. [microfilm reel] (Los Angeles [Calif.]) 1900-1911, 1909-06-11

Egyptian people gave civilization and
commerce one of it's greatest gifts IN
the Suez canal, but the cost to them
was all that they had, and they were
never repaid. -.
EVERY day in the year a dozen great
ships make the procession through the
canal. the ninety miles slow travelling
which saves them the cost OF clrculhc =
navigating the great continent ol
Africa. They pay we'll for it and the
owners of the canal shares wax ld''
England controls the canal, the con
struction of which John Bull atteIhpl-
ed in every possible manner to prevent.
Enqlish ships bound from "home" TO
Ronbav cut down the distance from
10 $50 miles to 1920 miles by taking the
canal route, and the vast majority OF
ships which pay tolls to the canal
company fly the British nag. Germany
comes second a long way AFTER flol-
land third and the French, whose
dreams of commercial empire cut the
ditrh are fourth. The United States
Of America has not been represented
in the canal in a decade by any COM
merciaI ship-only vessels OF the navy
and Yachts of the Yankee mllllonalres
show the Stars and Stripes to tne
Redouins of the desert who bring their
caravans from Mt Sinai 10 the cSiiai'
The tonnage of the Suez is not one
third as great as that of the Sault sue
Marie canal in the great lakes, put It's
Importance to the commerce OF tne
world is greater than that of any otner
passageway of the seas. wherever
there is a. strait or a narrow passage
through which commerce may go lhere
ie sure to be a British flag hylng, a
british hand playing and relocated
Tommy Atkins strutting about with u
su,a oger stick. Suez is not an excep-
ton. o,..
Fourteen centuries before Christ,
nearly $500 years ago, the Pharaoh
Seti I, father of Rameses the Great
cut a canal fifty-seven miles long from
a branch of the Nile delta to the bitter
lakes, which are now a part or tne
Suez canal and which were then tho
northern extremity of the Gulf of Suez,
| That connected the Mediterranean with
the Red sea, and Egypt waxed great
But the nation decayed and the sanus
of the desert filled up the ditch. Eight
hundred years later the Pharaoh Necho
undertook to dig the canal. More than
a hundred thousand lives were sacri-
feed to the project, but 1t was aban-
doned when a priest predicted that It's
completion would cause EGYPT TO 1all
into the hands of a foreign usurer. "A
hundred years after Necho the PERSIAN
Darius took up the work on the apan-
doned canal, but his engineers told
him that it's completion would cause a
deluge and he desisted. About three
hundred years before Christ was born
Ptolemy Philadelphus constructed
lock and dam canal through which
ships made the journey from one OF the
mouths of the Nile to the site of mod
ern 'Suez. Continued wars interrupted
commerce and the locks and dams fell
into decay So that Cleopatra's navy
! tn the Red
by canal. The Roman engineers later
patched up the canal SO that their gal
leys made their way from sea to sea,
but when the Arabs came in A. d.
700 they found it choked up. Amrou,
the Arab, cleared it out, but 1t was
soon permitted to fill up again. and not
until the great Napoleon reached Egypt
was the canal project again considered.
Napoleon abandoned the idea only be-
cause his engineers assured him that
the level of the Mediterranean was
thirty feet below that of the. Red
sea. He then considered a lock and
dam canal, but he evacuated Egypt
before anything came of it. OF course,
all those ancient canals were very mar
row and shallow, and no boat now dig
nified with the business of carrying
cargo for profit could have entered any
one of them.
Mehemet Ali, the great pasha who
founded the present Egyptian khediv-
ate, was urged to attempt the canal
project, but he was wary. At last he
pushed it aside and listened to the
Englishman, Robert Stephenson, the
father of the railroad. Under Stephen
sons supervision he built a railroad
from Cairo to Suez, connecting with
the line from Cairo to Alexandria. This
formed the "great overland route" to
bureau and you will find clew to the