2nd. The indirect Canal will be detrimental to the Canal works, so necessary to Lower Egypt, and will partly interfere with that admirable hydraulic system, which is at once the pride and the fertilization of the country. It will be in vain to make circuits to avoid the branchings of the network; as the termination is to be at the port of Alexandria, it will be absolutely necessary to pass between the Mahmoudieh Canal and Lake Mareotis; and then the flow of all the waters into the Lake which is destined to receive them will be prevented. Passing through the Lake, as the railway does, seas of mire will be met with, so much dreaded on the Pelusiac coast. It has already been necessary to raise again and again the embankment of the railway which was disappearing in the Lake, and for three years it has been necessary to labour unceasingly at the repairs which are continually required; what will it be when a dyke must be constructed at least 6000 _metres_ in length, to heights of 7 to 8 _metres_, without knowing where to procure the necessary earth for these embankments? 3rd. The indirect Canal cannot terminate in the port of Alexandria without causing still greater confusion there than it causes in the Canal works. In the first place the port of Alexandria is not _immutable_, as has been supposed. It has not escaped the action of the ground swell, which has choked it with sand to a good third of its extent. The part of the port which has been selected is frequently agitated by the north-west winds, and the surf is then so violent in rough weather, that even small craft dare not approach it. The rock is found there at a small depth below the sea, and as it would be necessary to extend the dykes of the Canal to 250 _metres_ into the harbour, to obtain a draught of water of 7 _met._, 50 to 8 _met._, the rock would have to be excavated under the water. Add to this that in this direction all the grand magazines and all the Government works would be encountered; there is not the least free space between the railway and the Mahmoudieh canal. But let us suppose all these difficulties overcome, there are others which the Canal raises, and which it multiplies the more it is employed. The port of Alexandria, the only military port of Egypt, is then besieged by hundreds of merchant vessels, and by the sailors of the whole of Europe. Let there be a contrary wind ever so slight, or some requisite repairs to the locks, and that the movement is arrested, just fancy the impediment, without taking into account the political dangers of such an accumulation. Moreover it is not only at Alexandria that this intolerable inconvenience would arise; it might happen, in consequence of accidents easily to be foreseen but impossible to be prevented, that Egypt should see all on a sudden 8 to 10,000 foreign sailors stationed on a point of her territory, because the forty vessels at least which traverse it every