his beloved country only after
death. These are but some of the tragic side-lights of the great story
of the Suez Canal.

A few years since there was a movement in France to perpetuate De
Lesseps's name by officially calling the waterway the Canal de Lesseps.
But England withheld its approval, while other interests having a right
to be heard believed that the stigma of culpability over the Panama
swindles was fastened upon De Lesseps too positively to merit the
tribute desired by his relatives and friends. As a modified measure,
however, the canal administration was willing to appropriate a modest
sum to provide a statue of the once honored man to be placed at the
Mediterranean entrance of the canal.

There stands to-day on the jetty at Port Said, consequently, a bronze
effigy of the man for a few years known as "_Le grand Francais_," visage
directed toward Constantinople (where once he had been potent in
intrigue), the left hand holding a map of the canal, while the right is
raised in graceful invitation to the maritime world to enter. This piece
of sculpture is the only material evidence that such a person as
Ferdinand de Lesseps ever lived. The legacy to his family was that of a
man outliving his importance and fair name.

The name Port Said commemorates the viceroy granting the concession,
while Ismail the Splendid has his name affixed to the midway station on
the canal, Ismailia, where tourists scramble aboard the train bound for
Cairo and the Nile. The actual terminus at the Suez end is called Port
Tewfik, after Ismail's son and successor in the khedivate. This
convenient mode of perpetuating the names of mighty actors in the Suez
drama suggests a certain sentimentality, but the present generation
cares as little for the subject as for a moldy play-bill hanging in a
dark corner of a club-house.

As an engineering feat the construction of the canal was nothing
remarkable. Any youth knowing the principles of running lines and
following the course of least resistance might have planned it. In Cairo
and Alexandria it is flippantly said that De Lesseps traced with his
gold-headed walking-stick the course of the canal in the sand, while
hundreds of thousands of unpaid natives scooped the soil out with their
hands. The work was completed with dredges and labor-saving machinery,
as a fact. The enterprise cost practically $100,000,000--a million
dollars a mile; and half this was employed in greasing the wheels at
Cons