In the same year, De Lesseps started his project of building the Suez Canal, and joining the Mediterranean to the Red Sea; so that ships could proceed to India from Europe by a direct route. Many centuries before, a canal had been cut and generally used that ran from the Nile River to the Red Sea. The canal that De Lesseps proposed was to be larger, and the engineering difficulties greater. The vast enterprise was finally carried out, at a cost of about $100,000,000. It seems to have passed through the three successive stages of conception, development and production. The idea of building a canal did not originate in 1846, or in the brain of De Lesseps; for the idea was very old, probably older than recorded history. But the only man who formed the mental picture in his mind and afterwards developed it into a concrete plan was De Lesseps. He did this; and his plan was so complete and coherent, and so evidently practical, that he finally succeeded in convincing engineers and capitalists of the fact, and forming a large company. The execution of the concrete plan was not begun until 1859, and it was De Lesseps who began it. Thus De Lesseps, though he did not conceive the basic idea, conceived and combined the various ideas necessary to embody the basic idea in a concrete plan, then constructed the concrete plan, and then produced the actual instrument. This instrument (the canal) was a very useful instrument. An instrument, according to the _Standard Dictionary_, is "a means by which work is done." By means of the Suez Canal, the work of direct water transportation between the Far East and Europe was done; and it could not have been done, except by means of that instrument. It has been done by that instrument ever since, and at an increasing rate. The canal was completed in 1869, and widened and deepened in 1886. It has shortened the water distance between England and India by about 7600 miles, and has had a tremendous influence on history, especially on Great Britain's history. One of the largest stockholders is the British Government; three-fourths of the ships passing through it have been British; and though the whole world has benefited, the greatest single beneficiary has been Great Britain.