There is evidence to indicate that no one of the shorter routes, had there been no Turks nor any other nation on their lines to take toll upon wares, could have competed for the trade of southern Asia with western Europe against the Cape route. The land transit alone by the Persian Gulf route seems to have cost more than the sea freight from India to Europe.[52] A calculation made about the year 1800 shows that a shipment from India to France by way of the Red Sea would probably make a profit of 4 per cent., whereas the same consignment if sent round the Cape would earn from 36 to 48 per cent.; if a Christian power were in possession of the Red Sea and Egypt the gain by that route would be not more than 10 per cent.[53] The Red Sea is so straight and narrow, and so strewn with rocks and shallows, that sailing-vessels have to wait for favourable winds and waste much time. The Indiamen were not well adapted to this sea, so that transhipment was customary at Aden, Mocha, or Jedda. There was always a transit by land, of some ninety miles at the shortest (from Suez to Cairo), then a passage by small vessel on the Nile, and another transhipment at Alexandria. On the other hand the time necessary for a voyage between India and Europe averaged not much less by the Cape route than by the Red Sea.[54] Until the invention of the steamship, which could run straight through the Red Sea without reference to the winds, and the excavation of the Suez Canal, which eliminated the land transit, the Cape route seems to have been cheaper than all others for long distance wares.[55]