I have before me the figures giving the traffic of the Suez Canal in a typical year. Four thousand vessels and five hundred thousand travellers passed through. Supposing that each made a saving of four thousand miles only, the total gain for the year would have been sixteen million miles or enough to reach six hundred and forty times around the world at the Equator. The gain is even greater at the Panama Canal. It is hard to estimate how much time and distance have been saved for the world by these two great waterways. My investigations at Port Said and Suez show that not only will the Panama Canal pay, but that Uncle Sam will some day find it his most profitable investment. Our trip from the Mediterranean to the Gulf of Suez took just eighteen hours, and it cost the ship a toll of four hundred dollars per hour. For the privilege of passing through it had to pay seventy-five hundred dollars, and, in addition, two dollars for every man, woman, and child on board. All the canal company did in this case was to reach out its hand and take in the money. The ship had to furnish its own coal and steam its way through, the toll being merely for the right of passage. But this ship is comparatively small. Its tonnage is only five thousand, and many of the vessels now using the canal are much larger. Nearly every day steamers pay ten thousand dollars each for their passage, and tolls of fifteen and twenty thousand dollars are not uncommon. When an army transport goes through, the men on board are charged two dollars a head, and this adds enormously to the canal receipts. Indeed, a war, which knocks so many other stocks flat, sends those of the Suez Canal sky-high. [Illustration: Beside the Suez Canal runs a fresh-water canal built to supply the workmen digging the big ditch. The trees lining its banks are striking proof that the desert needs only moisture to make it bloom.] [Illustration: The traffic and earnings of the Suez Canal have far exceeded the hopes of even De Lesseps, whose statue now stands at the entrance of the great ditch through the desert which changed the shipping routes of the world.] The Suez Canal is controlled by the British. It was planned out by a Frenchman, financed by French bankers, and engineered by French brains, but the bulk of the profits go to John Bull. When Ferdinand de Lesseps proposed to build it, the English sneered at the suggestion. When he got a concession from the Khedive, Said Pasha, they actually opposed its construction, doing everything they could to clog the work. The French received no help from other European nations, but they went on. They began digging in 1859, and just about ten years later the waters of the Mediterranean were allowed to flow into the Red Sea.