The Suez Canal being completed, its opening was to be made an international affair of great importance.  The work was the work of French engineers, led by M. Ferdinand de Lesseps, in every way a most remarkable man.

England looked coldly on the enterprise.  To use the vulgar phrase both literally and metaphorically, she “took no stock” in the Suez Canal, and she sent no royal personage, nor other representative to the opening ceremonies; the only Englishman of official rank who was present was an admiral, whose flag-ship was in the harbor of Port Said.

The Emperor Napoleon was wholly unable to leave France at a time so critical; but he sent his fair young empress in his stead.  He stayed at Saint-Cloud, and took advantage of her absence to submit to a severe surgical operation.  The empress went first to Constantinople, where Sultan Abdul Aziz gave a beautiful fete in her honor, at which she appeared, lovely and all glorious, in amber satin and diamonds.  She afterwards proceeded to Egypt as the guest of the khedive, entering Port Said Nov. 16, 1869, and returning to Paris on the 5th of December.

[Illustration:  EMPRESS EUGENIE.]

The opening of the canal across the isthmus of Suez, which was in a manner to unite the Eastern with the Western world, caused the eyes of all Christendom to be fixed on Egypt,—­the venerable great-grandmother of civilization.  The great work had been completed, in spite of Lord Palmerston’s sincere conviction, which he lost no opportunity of proclaiming to the world, that it was impossible to connect the Red Sea with the Mediterranean.  The sea-level, he said, was not the same in the two seas so that the embankments could not be sustained, and drift-sands from the desert would fill the work up rapidly from day to day.  Ismail Pasha, the khedive of Egypt, had made the tour of Europe, inviting everybody to the opening, from kings and kaisers, empresses and queens, down to members of chambers of commerce and marine insurance companies.  Great numbers were to be present, and the Empress Eugenie was to be the Cleopatra of the occasion.  But suddenly the khedive was threatened with a serious disappointment:  the sultan, his suzerain, wanted to join in the festivities; and if he were present, he must be the chief personage, the khedive would be thrust into a vassal’s place, and all his glory, all his pleasure in his fete, would be gone.

The ancient Egyptians, whose attention was much absorbed in waterworks and means of irrigation, had, as far back as the days of Sesostris, conceived the idea of communication between the Nile and the Red Sea.  Traces of the canal that they attempted still remain.  Pharaoh Necho, in the days of the Prophet Jeremiah, revived the project.  Darius and one of the Ptolemies completed the work, but when Egypt sank back into semi-barbarism, the canal was neglected and forgotten.  It does not appear, however, that the Pharaohs ever thought of connecting the Red Sea with the Mediterranean.  The canal of Sesostris and of Pharaoh Necho was a purely local affair, affecting Egyptian commerce alone.