SUEZ, a seaport situated at the northern extremity of the gulf of the same name. It is so incommodious that small boats can with difficulty land at the quay even at high water The town is in a ruinous state, walled on the west and southwest; but the wall is rapidly falling to decay. The population only consists of about a dozen agents, who receive goods from the ports of the Red Sea, and forward them to their correspondents at Cairo, together with some shopkeepers, who deal chiefly in provisions. Neither merchants nor artisans live in it. The pacha keeps a garrison here of about fifty horsemen, with an officer, who commands the town, the neighbouring Arabs, and the shipping in the harbour. Suez is one of the few harbours in the Red Sea where ships can be repaired. Although the port is now little frequented, the trade in coffee and India goods still passes this way to Cairo.

The isthmus of Suez is a low-lying land, composed of shell limestone rock, mixed with strata of siliceous limestone, and partly covered with sands or with saline marshes. In several places the solid strata are with difficulty perceived by their slight undulations; in the northern part in particular there is a vast plain, varied only by sand-hills. To the east, the south-east, and the south-west, the mountain-chains of Arabia Petraea and of Egypt skirt at a distance the table-land of the isthmus, which is terminated at the Red Sea. The lake Birket-el-Ballah adjoining Lake Menzaleh, Temsah or Crocodile Lake, and the almost dry basin of the Bitter Lakes, form from north to south a series of depressions, interrupted only by stripes of low land. The breadth of the isthmus, in a straight line from the mouth of Tinch on the Mediterranean to the northern point of the Gulf of Suez, is 878,844 feet, or nearly seventy-two miles.

The question whether or not the Isthmus of Suez has always existed, has given rise to much discussion among the learned; some maintaining that this neck of land was formerly covered by the sea, and that Africa was an island; others that it must formerly have been much narrower than it is now; and others that it has undergone little or no change. This latter hypothesis is defended by D'Anville, in opposition to the opinions of Gossellin and Rosière, whose arguments are in favour of the contraction of the gulf.

The surface of the isthmus generally declines from the shores of the Red Sea towards those of the Mediterranean; and the level of the latter is thirty feet lower than that of the Gulf of Suez. There is a similar descent towards the Delta and the bed of the river Nile; the level of the water of the Nile at Cairo, when at its lowest, being about nine feet lower than the surface of the gulf at low water. But the Nile rising sixteen cubits by the Nilometer, is nine feet higher than the Red Sea at high water, and fourteen higher than the same sea at low water. Besides these leading inclinations of the surface, there is a particular one in the middle of the isthmus. The deep basin called the Bitter Lakes is more than fifty-four feet lower than the level of the Red Sea, the waters of which would enter and fill it if they were not prevented by a little sandy isthmus about three feet above the level of the sea.

From this it follows that the Red Sea never could have occupied the basin of the Bitter Lakes in a constant manner, because its waters, if raised sufficiently high to form such a communication, would have found no barrier to the north of that basin: they would have flowed all the way to the Nile by the Ras-el-Ooadi, and to the Mediterranean by the Ras-el-Mayah. The two seas thus brought into contact would have reached a common level, and the strait would have become permanent.

But if a natural communication between the two seas has never existed within the periods of human record, the traces and remains of a canal have been ascertained with satisfactory precision. From Balbeis, on the old Pelusiac branch of the Nile, now the Canal of Menedji, this canal reaches to Ablasch, the ancient Thou. There it enters the narrow valley of Arabes-Tommylat, the level of which is thirty-three feet lower than that of the Red Sea. It passes on to Abookes-heyd, which is supposed to be the old Heroopolis. The basin of the Bitter Lakes might have been filled at pleasure from the waters of the Nile.

Beyond this basin the traces of the canal re-appear in the isthmus which separates the lakes from the Red Sea, and show that the canal was continued the whole way. According to Strabo, this canal was constructed by the Ptolemies; and the Arabian writers assert that it was opened[7:20:789] again by order of the Caliph Omar, and was used for navigation from the year 644 to 767; at which time another caliph caused it to be shut up. in order to deprive a rebel chief of his supplies of provisions. While the French army was in Egypt, some learned discussions were maintained on the practicability and advantages of its restitution. But however useful its re-establishment might be to the country through which it passes, it is very problematical if it could ever be rendered a medium of commercial communication on a large scale.