Nevertheless, the canal was built and Signer Verdi composed his noble opera “A?da” in honour of the occasion and the Khedive ruined himself by providing free board and lodging and free tickets to “A?da” to all his foreign visitors, who filled not less than sixty-nine vessels when they went a-picnicking from Port Sa?d to Suez, which was the terminus of the canal on the Red Sea.
Then England changed her tactics and her prime-minister, Benjamin Disraeli, who belonged to a race that has never yet been accused of lacking in business ability, managed to get hold of a majority of the canal stock which until then had belonged to the Khedive. And as Napoleon no longer counted and the route proved to be a god-send for the trade between Asia and Europe and produced almost $40,000,000 a year in revenue alone (28,000,000 tons passed through it in 1930, which is almost one-third of the total number of tons that passed through our own Sault Ste. Marie Canal), there have been no further complaints from the side of the British government.
By the way, the famous antiquities of Egypt art situated all over the land. The pyramids you will find in the neighbourhood of Cairo where Memphis was once upon a time located. But Thebes, the old capital of upper Egypt, was situated several hundred miles further up the river. Unfortunately the tremendous irrigation works of Assuan have turned the temple of Philae into little islands which are entirely surrounded by the muddy waters of the Nile and which are therefore doomed to ultimate destruction. The grave of King Tut-Ank-Amen, who died fourteen centuries before the beginning of our era, is to be found in that part of Egypt, as are the graves of many other kings whose former household possessions and whose mummies are gathered together in the museum of Cairo which is fast becoming a cemetery as well as one of the world’s most interesting collections of antiquities.
The third part of Africa, geographically different from all other sections, is the Sudan. The Sudan runs almost parallel with the Sahara but it does not continue quite so far eastward because it is brought to a sudden halt by the high plateaus of Abyssinia which separate it from the Red Sea.
Now in the great international bridge game played with Africa as a stake, when one nation announces “three spades” the others at once answer “four diamonds”. England had taken the Cape from the Dutch during the beginning of the nineteenth century. The original settlers, being Dutch and therefore obstinate, had packed their belongings in their covered wagons, had inspanned their oxen and had trekked northward (these are now perfectly good English words. Since the late Boer War you will find them in any good dictionary.) The English were playing the game the Russians had played in the sixteenth century during the conquest of Siberia. You will remember how it was played. As soon as enough Russian fugitives had settled a new region of Siberia, the Czar’s troops went after them and informed them that since they were originally Russian subjects, the land they had just occupied was therefore of course Russian subjects, the land they had just occupied was therefore of course Russian property and the government in Moscow would let them know when to except the tax-collector.
The English were forever following the Boers further northward, trying to annex their territory. It had come to several very disagreeable conflicts, for the Boer farmers, having spent most of their lives out in the open, were better shots than the Cockney regiments turned loose against them. After the battle of Majuha in 1881 (Gladstone, who was eminently fair in this matter, on that occasion gave a lesson in forbearance which all statesmen might well copy: “Just because we were defeated last night and our pride is hurt is no reason why we should insist on the shedding of more blood!”), the Boers gained a temporary and regained their independence.
But all the world knew what the end would be of this struggle between the British Empire and a handful of farmers, English land companies, acquiring enormous tracts of land from native chiefs, were creeping up further and further northward. Meanwhile British troops, in order to establish order all over Egypt, were slowly but steadily working their way southward along both banks of the Nile, A famous English missionary was exploring the central region of Africa with the most brilliant results. Plainly the English were digging themselves a tunnel right through the heart of the Dark Continent. They had started building operations simultaneously in Cairo and the Cape (the usual way for tunnels to be constructed). Sooner or later the two ends would meet in the region of the great lakes where both the Nile and the Congo came from and then England could run her trains from Alexandria to Table Bay (so called after the Table Mountain, that curiously shaped mesa that forms a natural background for Capetown) without a change of cars.
What England was so evidently trying to do along a line running from north to south, France now planned to do along a line running from west to east, from the Atlantic to the Red Sea, let us say from Dakar in the Senegal to Djibouti in French Somaliland, which was also the port of entry for the whole of Abyssinia and which even then was connected by railroad with the Abyssinian capital of Addis Ababa.