Читать книгу The Sea: Its Stirring Story of Adventure, Peril, & Heroism (Vol. 1-4). The History of Sea Voyages, Discovery, Piracy and Maritime Warfare онлайн

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At length the scheme emerged from fog to fact. The Viceroy had promised 20,000 Egyptian labourers, but in 1861 he begged to be let out of his engagement. He had to pay handsomely for the privilege. Although the men were paid higher than they had ever been before, their labour was cheap: it cost double or treble the amount to employ foreigners.

The Canal, in its course of a shade over 100 miles, passes through several salt marshes, “Les Petits Bassins des Lacs Amers,” in one of which a deposit of salt was found, seven miles long by five miles wide. It also passes through an extensive piece of water, Lake Menzaleh.

At Lake Menzaleh the banks are very slightly above the level of the Canal, and from the deck of a big steamer there is an unbounded view over a wide expanse of lake and morass studded with islets, and at times gay and brilliant with innumerable flocks of rosy pelicans, scarlet flamingoes, and snow-white spoonbills, geese, ducks, and other birds. The pelicans may be caught bodily from a boat, so clumsy are they in the water, without the expenditure of powder and shot. Indeed, the sportsman might do worse than visit the Canal, where, it is almost needless to state, the shooting is open to all. A traveller, who has recently passed through the Canal en route to India, writes that there are alligators also to be seen. The whole of the channel through Lake Menzaleh was almost entirely excavated with dredges. When it was necessary to remove some surface soil before there was water enough for the dredges to float, it was done by the natives of Lake Menzaleh, a hardy and peculiar race, quite at home in digging canals or building embankments. The following account shows their mode of proceeding:—“They place themselves in files across the channel. The men in the middle of the file have their feet and the lower part of their legs in the water. These men lean forward and take in their arms large clods of earth, which they have previously dug up below the water with a species of pickaxe called a fass, somewhat resembling a short, big hoe. The clods are passed from man to man to the bank, where other men stand with their backs turned, and their arms crossed behind them, so as to make a sort of primitive hod. As soon as each of these has had enough clods piled on his back, he walks off, bent almost double, to the further side of the bank, and there opening his arms, lets his load fall through to the ground. It is unnecessary to add that this original métier requires the absence of all clothing.”90