nostication of Necho's oracle.

Greater than any royal actor in the Suez enterprise, however, was
Ferdinand de Lesseps, the Frenchman whom history persists in calling an
engineer. By training and occupation he was a diplomatist, probably
knowing no more of engineering than of astronomy or therapeutics.
Possessing limitless ambition, he longed to be conspicuously in the
public gaze, to be great. He excelled as a negotiator, and knew this;
and it came easy to him to organize and direct. In his day the
designation "Captain of Industry" had not been devised. In the project
of canalizing the Suez isthmus--perennial theme of Cairo bazaar and
coffee-house--he recognized his opportunity, and severed his connection
with the French Consulate-General in Egypt to promote the alluring
scheme, under a concession readily procured from Viceroy Said. This was
in 1856.

Egypt had no debt whatever when Said Pasha signed the document. But when
the work was completed, in 1869, the government of the ancient land of
the Pharaohs was fairly tottering under its avalanche of obligations to
European creditors, for every wile of the plausible De Lesseps had been
employed to get money from simple Said, and later from Ismail Pasha, who
succeeded him in the khedivate. For fully a decade the raising of money
for the project was the momentous work of the rulers of Egypt; but more
than half the cash borrowed at usurious rates stuck to the hands of the
money brokers in Europe, let it be known, while the obligation of Said
or Ismail was in every instance for the full amount.

Incidentally, a condition of the concession was that Egypt need
subscribe nothing, and as a consideration for the concession it was
solemnly stipulated that for ninety-nine years--the period for which the
concession was given--fifteen per cent, of the gross takings of the
enterprise would be paid to the Egyptian treasury.

[Illustration: PORT SAID ENTRANCE TO SUEZ CANAL, SHOWING DE LESSEP'S
STATUE]

Learning the borrowing habit from his relations with plausible De
Lesseps, the magnificent Ismail borrowed in such a wholesale manner, for
the Egyptian people and himself, that in time both were hopelessly in
default to stony-hearted European creditors. Egyptian bonds were then
quoted in London at about half their face value, and Britons held a
major part of them.

England had originally fought the canal project, opposing it in every
way open to her power and influence at Continent