h lies through Lakes
Menzaleh, Ballah, Timsah, and the Bitter Lakes; as widened and deepened
in 1886 it has a minimum depth of 28 ft., and varies from 150 to 300 ft.
in width; traffic is facilitated by electric light during the night, and
the passage occupies little more than 24 hours; has been neutralised and
exempted from blockade, vessels of all nations in peace or war being free
to pass through; now the highway to India and the East, shortening the
voyage to India by 7600 m.; three-fourths of the ships passing through
are English; an annual toll is drawn of close on three million pounds,
the net profit of which falls to be divided amongst the shareholders, of
whom since 1875 the British Government has been one of the largest.

SUFFOLK (371), eastmost county of England, fronts the North Sea
between Norfolk (N.) and Essex (S.); is a pleasant undulating county with
pretty woods and eastward-flowing streams (Waveney, Aide, Orwell, Stour,
&c.); long tracts of heathland skirt the coast; agriculture is still the
staple industry, wheat the principal crop; is famed for its antiquities,
architecture, historic associations, and long list of worthies. Ipswich
is the county town.

SUFFREN, BAILLI DE, a celebrated French admiral, who entered the
navy a boy of 14 during the wars with England, and rose to be one of his
country's greatest naval heroes, especially distinguishing himself as
commander of a squadron in the West Indies, proving himself a master of
naval tactics in more or less successful engagements with the English; is
regarded by Professor Laughton as "the most illustrious officer that has
ever held command in the French navy"; sprang from good Provence stock
(1729-1788).

SUFISM, the doctrine of the Sufis, a sect of Mohammedan mystics;
imported into Mohammedanism the idea that the soul is the subject of
ecstasies of Divine inspiration in virtue of its direct emanation from
the Deity, and this in the teeth of the fundamental article of the
Mohammedan creed, which exalts God as a being passing all comprehension
and ruling it by a law which is equally mysterious, which we have only to
obey; this doctrine is associated with the idea that the body is the
soul's prison, and death the return of it to its original home, a
doctrine of the dervish fraternity, of which the Madhi is high-priest.

SUGER, ABBE, abbot of St. Denis, minister of Louis VI. and Louis
VII.; reformed the discipline in his abbey, emancipated the