Railways, under present circumstances, would expedite the transmission of passengers by the steam ships across the Desert, and might be useful in the transmission of light and valuable goods between the Nile and the Red Sea; but it must be greatly doubted if a sufficient traffic could thereby arise to pay the construction and maintenance of eighty miles of railway between Cairo and Suez. On the other hand, were it contemplated to construct a railway between the bay of Tineh and Suez, the cost, including the improvement of the harbours at either terminus, would nearly equal the expense of the proposed Canal; but the _means_ of keeping the terminal harbours deep and clean would be foregone from want of means of scourage; and to the expense of the railway would have to be added the expense of unloading and reloading the cargoes of each shipment; so that it is manifest that a railway direct between the two Seas could stand no competition with the proposed Canal, which, besides its value as a commercial channel, would facilitate the steam navigation with India in the highest degree, by permitting the steamers to make a continuous voyage; and by permitting supplies of coals being sent direct to Suez and Aden, &c., the detention of steamers at Suez and Alexandria would be avoided, four or five days would be gained in the transmission of passengers and mails, and the expenditure in the price of coals would be much reduced. The Author again acknowledges his obligations to the able statements of Mr. Maclaren’s paper of 1825, connected with this subject, and now quotes that author’s opinions and those of the writer in the Foreign Quarterly Review of 1836, as to the feasibility of the proposed measure:— “Yet it is certain that the project must not only have been practicable but easy, since it was accomplished in early times by men who were unprovided with many of those resources which modern art supplies. In fact, when the ground is explored the supposed difficulties vanish, and we discover that Nature has furnished such singular and unexpected facilities for establishing a water communication between the two Seas, that she has left little for man to do to complete her work.”—MACLAREN, _Jamieson’s Journal_, 1825, p. 274. “Were European civilization and a regular Government permanently re-established in Egypt, the undertaking would be found not only practicable but easy; so great, in fact, are the facilities which the ground presents, that though the Canal (taking the magnitude of its section into account) would certainly be the largest that exists, the expense would be considerably less than that of some small works of the same kind executed in the west of Europe.”—_Ibid._ p. 290.