increase and facility of water conveyance, it is doubtful whether the utility of this canal would have been commensurate with its cost, or its receipts have made any profit for its promoters. By the Caledonian Canal large steamers and other vessels may pass from sea to sea, and in the summer time the steamers that traverse it are crowded with tourists attracted by the magnificent scenery it presents throughout the greater part of its length. But whatever had previously been done in canal construction was surpassed in enterprise and importance by Lesseps’ great work in Egypt. _THE SUEZ CANAL._ As we have already seen, the idea of opening a waterway between the Red Sea and the Mediterranean is by no means a product of the present century. The ancient Egyptians do not appear to have cut directly through the Isthmus, but Herodotus describes a canal made by Necho about the year 600 B.C., from Suez through the Bitter Lakes to Lake Timsah and then westward to Bubastis on the Nile. He mentions certain water gates, and states that vessels took four days in sailing through. This canal became silted up with sand ages ago, but it was cleared out again and re-opened in the seventh century of our era by the Caliph Omar, and traces of it are still visible. According to some recent discoveries in the chief archives of Venice, as early as the end of the fifteenth century, when Vasco da Gama had discovered the Cape of Good Hope, and the Portuguese took that new route to India, hitherto the exclusive property of the Venetian and Genoese merchants, a re-cutting of the Isthmus of Suez was thought of. Plans were prepared and embassies sent to Egypt for paving the way for the accomplishment of this great enterprise, which, it is said, was only foiled by the persistent opposition of some patricians, who were probably bribed by foreign gold to prevent the execution of the plan. One of our Elizabethan poets, Christopher Marlowe, appears, in the following lines, to have anticipated M. de Lesseps:— “Thence marched I into Egypt and Arabia, And here, not far from Alexandria, Whereat the Terrene and the Red Sea meet, Being distant less than full a hundred leagues. I meant to cut a channel to them both, That men might quickly sail to India.”