During the earlier years of commerce with India, the route from Britain was by the Mediterranean, the Black Sea, and the Caspian, through Persia, reaching India at its northern extremity. The sea route, _via_ the Cape of Good Hope, was discovered by the Portuguese in 1497, and continued to be the great highway of commerce to the East until our own times. Although circuitous, the Cape route was infinitely preferable to that of inland seas and deserts infested by hostile tribes, to say nothing of the advantage of reaching destinations without transhipment. The importance of India as a field of British enterprise began with the incorporation of the East India Company in the year 1600. From a small trading company it gradually became a vast aggressive monopoly, with a large standing army at its back, and a numerous fleet of ships that served the double purpose of carrying merchandise and fighting the French, or any other covetous enemy. In 1811, when the company had reached the zenith of its power, it owned sixty-seven ships, each armed with from 30 to 38 guns; thirty-one ships of from 20 to 28 guns, and fifty-two ships of from 10 to 19 guns. The sea route to Calcutta was over 13,000 miles, and not unfrequently a whole year was occupied in making the round trip. In the days of clipper ships, however, the single voyage was sometimes accomplished inside of one hundred days. [Illustration: THE CAMEL-POST—“SHIP OF THE DESERT.”] Lieutenant Thomas Waghorn, R. N., an English naval officer, applied to the British Government for assistance in carrying out a project he had conceived of opening communication by steam between Britain and her great East Indian Empire. The result of his labours was the opening up of the overland mail route, as it was called, consisting at first of a steam service from Marseilles to Alexandria, thence by camel and Nile steamer to Cairo, a caravan across the desert to Suez, and steamers _via_ the Red Sea to Bombay and Calcutta. The next improvement was the substitution of a railway for “The Ship of the Desert,” in 1858, and the transmission of the English mails to Brindisi instead of Marseilles, and finally, the construction of the Suez Canal by Ferdinand Lesseps, the French engineer, at a cost of sixty million dollars. The canal is ninety-nine miles long with a width of 327 feet for 77 miles and 196 feet for the remaining 22 miles; the depth was originally twenty-six feet throughout, but the canal is undergoing progressive enlargement and deepening. The British Government in 1875 acquired by purchase shares in the enterprise to the value of £4,000,000 sterling. By a convention signed in 1888, the canal was exempted from blockade, and vessels of all nations, whether armed or not, may pass through it in peace or in war.[27] The North German Lloyd SS. _Frederick the Great_, of 10,500 tons register, which passed through the canal a few months ago _en route_ for Australia, is the largest vessel that has passed through it.