It Is Usual, After The First Audience, For The
Pasha To Send, In Token Of Honour, A Sorry Steed To The New Comer.
This
custom is a mere relic of the days when Mohammed the Second threatened
to stable his charger in
St. Peter's, and when a ride through the
streets of Cairo exposed the Inspector-general Tott, and his suite, to
lapidation and an "avanie." To send a good horse is to imply
degradation, but to offer a bad one is a positive insult.
[FN#39] As this canal has become a question of national interest, its
advisability is surrounded with all the circumstance of unsupported
assertion and bold denial. The English want a railroad, which would
confine the use of Egypt to themselves. The French desire a canal that
would admit the hardy cruisers of the Mediterranean into the Red Sea.
The cosmopolite will hope that both projects may be carried out. Even
in the seventh century Omar forbade Amru to cut the Isthmus of Suez for
fear of opening Arabia to Christian vessels. As regards the feasibility
of the ship-canal, I heard M. Linant de Bellefonds-the best authority
upon all such subjects in Egypt-expressly assert, after levelling and
surveying the line, that he should have no difficulty in making it. The
canal is now a fact. As late as April, 1864, Lord Palmerston informed
the House of Commons that labourers might be more usefully employed in
cultivating cotton than in "digging a canal through a sandy desert, and
in making two harbours in deep mud and shallow water." It is, however,
understood that the Premier was the only one of his Cabinet who took
this view.
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