, quite a small country.

"Do not quote me if you write this. Oddly enough, Ezekiel xlvii.
10 seems to say the Dead Sea shall have fish like the great Sea
(_i.e._ Mediterranean). Zechariah xiv. speaks of two rivers, one
going to Dead Sea, the other to Mediterranean.

"The cost would be--

Canal from Haifa to Jordan, L2,000,000
Compensation to Jordan peoples, 1,000,000
Canal through Akabah, 6,000,000
Ports at Haifa, 1,000,000
Ports at Akabah, 500,000
___________

L10,500,000
===========

say, twelve to fifteen millions, and what a comfort to be free of
Egypt and Soudan for ever!

"Revenue, Palestine, L120,000, of which L80,000 goes to Sultan.
Do not quote _me_, for I have written part of this to Mr W. (the
late Sir William) Mackinnon of B.I.S.N.C., besides which H.M.
Government may object. You may say you had a letter from a
correspondent."

He wrote in a similar strain to other correspondents, but I have never
succeeded in discovering whether, from an engineering point of view,
the scheme was at all feasible. It seems to me that its suggestion is
somewhat destructive of Gordon's own declarations as to the superior
merits of the Cape route, nor does Sir Henry Gordon much strengthen
the case when, perceiving the inconsistency, he goes out of his way to
declare that Gordon only meant the Palestine canal to be a commercial
route. Any attempt to limit its usefulness could not destroy the
character claimed for it by its promoters, as an equally short and
more secure route than that by Suez. Yet it needs no gift of second
sight to predict that when any project of rivalry to the masterpiece
of Lesseps is carried out, it will be by rail to the Persian Gulf,
whether the starting-point be the Bosphorus or the Levant.

In the midst of his interesting researches near Mount Carmel, a
summons from the outer world reached Gordon in the form of a letter
from Sir William Mackinnon, telling him that the King of the Belgians
now called on him to fulfil a promise he had made some years before.

When Gordon first returned from the Cape the King of the Belgians
wrote, reminding him of his old promi