Though the project had been occasionally mentioned, the work itself was never seriously contemplated except in one instance [329] until M. de Lesseps, about the year 1840, conceived a definite plan for carrying it out. Scientific men, indeed, in most parts of the world, considered the undertaking altogether impracticable. They alleged that the difficulties of the desert could never be surmounted, and that nothing stable could be erected on treacherous sands doomed by nature to sterility and desolation.[330] Indeed, Sir Daniel Lange,[330] the oldest and most earnest friend and colleague of M. de Lesseps in this country, and, from its commencement until now, the representative of the Suez Canal in England, remarks that so general was this opinion, that the captains of the small craft who first received orders to proceed to Pelusium with materials for the prosecution of the work, smiled with incredulity, but resigned themselves to what they thought a fool’s errand. [Sidenote: His great scheme.] [Sidenote: Not fairly considered in England.] Nor were these doubts surprising, for the site of ancient Pelusium is upon a low flat shelving sandy coast where sea and land seem to blend with each other, and where the long roll of the surf over a flat beach forbids even the approach of a boat. No wonder therefore that the indefatigable M. de Lesseps was unable for years to induce either governments or individuals to provide the requisite means; indeed, his own countrymen, when he issued the prospectus in 1857, were nearly if not quite as lukewarm about it as foreigners, while in England on the other hand, a great outcry was created, mainly by Lord Palmerston, against the project on political grounds. It is not, however, my province to enter upon these; but, surely, England, with her vast possessions in the East and with the command of the sea, was far more interested than any other nation in removing Egypt from the envy it had long been of powerful European nations, and, in cutting a ship canal—a great highway—through it, which would be open to the vessels of all nations like the Sound or the Dardanelles. Indeed, every increased facility for reaching our Indian possessions must be a far greater gain to us than to any other nation. But strange to say the political opposition raised by England[332] proved the chief means of enabling M. de Lesseps to raise the requisite capital, and secured him support he would otherwise not probably have obtained. Foreign capitalists, especially in France, now came forward to subscribe, not that they had much faith in the commercial success of the canal, but because they felt grieved or annoyed that an undertaking, which could not fail to benefit mankind, even if it did not pay the original subscribers, should be opposed on narrow and jealous grounds by one of the most conspicuous, if not in all matters the most enlightened, of English statesmen. [Sidenote: Commencement of M. de Lesseps’ works, 1857.]