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Show wo TURKEY AND THE SUEZ CANAL. Yesterday the, British government proclaimed a protectorate over Egypt This is the beginning of the end of Turkish Influence In the affairs of the land of the Pharaohs, unless the Turks, who are now reported only 15 miles from the Suez canal, gain possession pos-session of that waterway and then march triumphantly in to Cairo and Alexandria But as a guard to HJng lish control Blaiids the troops which hLve come up from Australia, and we predict that no Turkish force that does not outnumber them three to one will ever make those frontiersmen from the antipodes yield ground. These military operations and this shifting of khedives excite interest in the history of the Suez canal, which has brought the following sketch 'Somewhere during the years 1350 1300 B. C, the Egyptians, under Seti I and Ranicses II, joined the Nile by way of Lake Timsah to tho Reel sea. thus openiug a waterway, thi archetype of the present canal from the Mediterranean over the Sue isthmus to the Orient. This canal wa:-Choked wa:-Choked by sand In the course of age Necho. about 600 R C . bean a canai f'om ancient BubasMs and Darius Hystaspls, one hundred years later, completed the work, once more bringing bring-ing the Red sea ami Nile together Although nearly choked up by the beginning be-ginning of the christian era, It was navigable to a degree as late as the bs 1 1" ol Uiium, and some of Cleo-patrn's Cleo-patrn's ships escaped this way to the Ked sen. Trajan restored the canal. It fell into disuse and choked np I again. Amru, the Islamic conqueror j of Kgypt, restored it for the last time iu the seventh century connecting ( niro with the Red sea. Xapoleon caused the old route to be sun eyed, but was forced to drop the project After him, Metternlch. the great reactionary re-actionary prime minister of Austria-rlungary, Austria-rlungary, stimulated a Suez commission commis-sion in 1M7 Nothing, however, came of it. s the world well knows, the Suez canal was built by the man who failed to build tin- Panama canal Count Ferdinand de Lesseps. Its original depth was 26 1 4 feet, and its bottom width 72 feet It could accommodate Ships of 24 7-12 feet, but it was in operation 11 years, beginning in 1S09, before vessel of such dmfi niuhi passage. By 190 its depth had been ! increased to 20 1-2 feet, and when the L'nited States announced its intention in-tention to make a canal 41 feet deep 1 and 300 feet wide at its narrowest bottom point, at Panama, the work at Suez was extended so as ultimately to give a bottom widtn of 134 1-2 fee' and a depth of 36 1 12 feet. It was ex peeled that this enlargement would be completed by next ear, but the war has interrupted operations 'How much larger than the average aver-age demands for a canal the Panama j waterway has been made is strikingly shown by statement from Suez to the effect that only one per cent of the ships seeking passage by that route have a draft of 28 feet. In 189. ten vessels passed through the Suez canal. In 1912 5373 ships steamed through, of 20,275,120 net tonnage, and paying for this prtv-j ilege around 25.000,000. England bas dominated the canal ever since the Khedive, in 1S7S. sold his 176,602 canal ca-nal shares for S2u.u00.u00, to the British Brit-ish government These shares are now worth close to $200,000,000 " 00 |
