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 Continental capitals. The belief in time dawning upon the judgment of Britain that the canal would be finished and would succeed, her statesmen turned their energies to checkmating and minimizing the influence of De Lesseps and his dupe Ismail. The screws were consequently put on the Sultan of Turkey--whose vassal Ismail was--resulting in that Merry Monarch of the Nile being deposed and sent into exile, and the national cash-box at Cairo was at the same time turned over to a commission of European administrators--and is yet in their keeping.