But in connection with England's route to India, the name of Monsieur de Lesseps must never be forgotten, nor the great enterprise which, at so much cost, and in spite of so many obstacles, he successfully carried out--the Suez Canal. When he first projected it he met with most of the obstacles which are thrown in the way of great inventions. England, jealous of a scheme which seemed likely to throw into the hands of a foreign power the nearest route to her beloved India, stood sullenly aloof, and refused to contribute moral or pecuniary support; while some of the most eminent English and foreign engineers openly declared that it could never be carried out. M. de Lesseps, however, was one of those men who, when they have seized a great idea, can never be thrown off it. It had taken full possession of his imagination, judgment, and intellect! he felt that it _could_, and he determined that it _should_ be realized. He conquered every difficulty: he raised funds; he secured the support of his own government; and in 1856 he obtained from the Pasha of Egypt the exclusive privilege of constructing a ship-canal from Tyneh, near the ruins of the ancient Pelusium, to Suez. M. de Lesseps determined that his canal should be cut in a straight line, with an average width of 330 feet, and at an uniform depth of 20 feet under low-water mark, while at each end was to be constructed a sluice-lock, 330 feet long by 70 wide. Further, at each end he proposed to execute a magnificent harbour; that at the Mediterranean end was to be extended five miles into the sea, so as to obtain a permanent depth of water for a ship drawing twenty-three feet, on account of the enormous quantity of mud annually silted up by the Nile; that at the Red Sea end was to be three miles long. In 1865 the great canal was begun. The Mediterranean entrance is at Port Said, about the middle of the narrow neck of land between Lake Menzaleh and the sea, in the eastern part of the Delta. Thence it is carried for about twenty miles across Menzaleh Lake, being 112 yards wide at the surface, 26 yards at the bottom, and 26 feet deep. On each side an artificial bank rises some 15 feet high. The distance thence to Abu Ballah Lake is 11 miles, through ground which varies from 15 to 30 feet above the level of the sea. This lake being traversed, there is land again--a troublesome and shifty soil--to Timsah Lake, the canal being cut at a depth below the sea-level of 50 to 100 feet. On the shore of Timsah Lake has risen a new and busy town, the central point of the canal, and named Ismailia, in honour of the present Pasha of Egypt.