But, although a great deal had been done in the direction of facilitating navigation between different waters by getting rid of the “hyphen” by which they were separated anterior to the date of the Suez Canal, this grand enterprise undoubtedly marked a notable advance in the progress of the world from this point of view. The work was at once more original and more gigantic than any that had preceded it—so much so that in this country, as we have elsewhere shown, it was generally discredited. Probably no other canal previously constructed had cost anything like the same large sum that was set aside for that of Suez. The canal of Languedoc, constructed in the seventeenth century, is stated to have cost fourteen millions of livres. The Erie Canal had cost five million seven hundred thousand dollars (1,140,000_l._). The Caledonian Canal cost 1,035,460_l._ The Amsterdam Canal cost about the same amount. The Suez Canal, however, was estimated to cost 8,000,000_l._ to 10,000,000_l._, or nearly ten times as much as the largest canals constructed up to that time. Nowadays this would not be regarded as a large sum for such a purpose. We have got accustomed to big figures. A hundred millions sterling is not an uncommon capital for a railway company. The Manchester Canal, only some thirty miles long, is estimated to cost about eight millions sterling, and more than sixty millions have been sunk at Panama. But so little faith was felt in the success of the Suez Canal, with such a large expenditure, that it was seriously maintained in the “Edinburgh Review” that, “were it to become the great highway of nations between the West and the East—even the Gates of the East, as it has been the fashion to call it—and were all the local advantages predicted for Egypt to be derived from it, still, on account of the enormous expense of construction and maintenance, it would not pay.”