Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 56, No. 346, August, 1844

After the reign of Justinian, it is not improbable that the repairs necessary for maintaining the navigation of the canal open began to be neglected, as we know that the population and industry of Egypt began to decline. The tribute of grain to Constantinople, and the public distributions to the people of Alexandria, appear to have exhausted all the surplus produce of the country; and to facilitate their collection, Justinian forbade the exportation of grain from any part of Egypt but Alexandria, except under great restrictions.43 This edict, doubtless, ruined both the canal and the trade in the Red Sea, and may be looked upon as one of the proximate causes of the increasing power of the Arabs about the time of the birth of Mohammed. The Arabian caravans became possessed of the commerce formerly carried on in the northern part of the Red Sea; and as the wealth and civilization of the Arabs increased, a demand for a new religion, and a more extended empire, arose.44 Had the complete abandonment of the canal not taken place shortly after the publication of Justinian's edict, it must have been completed during the universal anarchy which prevailed while Phocas reigned at Constantinople. Shortly after Heraclius delivered the empire from Phocas, the Persians invaded Egypt, and kept possession of it for ten years; nor is it probable that Heraclius could have made any efforts to restore the canal during the time he ruled Egypt, after recovering it from the Persians. When the Saracens conquered Egypt, they found the canal filled with sand.

The principle of all Mohammedan governments places the supreme power of the state in the person of the sovereign; and these sovereigns, in the simplicity or barbarism of their political views, have always considered the construction of wells, fountains, caravanseries, and mosques, as the only public works, except palaces, (if palaces can be properly so called,) worthy of a monarch's attention. Ports and canals they have always utterly despised, and roads and bridges have been barely tolerated. It is as difficult to civilize the mind of a true Mohammedan, as it is to wash the skin of a negro white. But the earlier caliphs were not moulded into true Mussulmans; they had been witnesses to the making of their religion; and, when they forsook the rude superstitions of their forefathers of the desert, they had admitted some gleams of common sense and sound reason into their minds, along with the sermons of Mohammed.

And in the early ages of the caliphate, Syria and Egypt were inhabited by a numerous Christian population of the Nestorian and Jacobite heresies, firmly attached to the Saracen power, on their hatred to the orthodox Roman emperors at Constantinople. The importance of the canal of Suez to the well-being of these useful subjects of the Arab empire, could not escape the attention of the caliphs. The native population of Egypt had, with the greatest unanimity, joined the Saracens against the Romans; and the Caliph Omar would have been led by policy to restore the canal, in order to enrich these devoted partisans, as he was induced to burn the library of Alexandria to diminish the moral influence of the Greeks.

The Arabian historians and geographers contain numerous passages relating to the re-opening of the canal, and many of these will be found translated at the end of the Mémoire sur le Canal des Deux Mers. They state that Omar ordered the canal of Trajan to be cleared out in its whole extent. The necessity of securing a greatly increased supply of grain for the holy cities of Medina and Mecca, whose population had been suddenly augmented by their becoming the capitals of all Arabia, and the centres of the Mohammedan power, could not be overlooked. But the mind of Omar was particularly directed to the subject, in consequence of a famine which prevailed in Arabia in the eighteenth year of the Hegira, (A.D. 639,) which was afterwards called the year of the mortality. In that year, the caliph's attention was also more especially called to the fertility of Egypt, as Amron, at his pressing demand for provisions, sent such an immense caravan, that the Arabian writers, with their usual exaggeration, declare, that the convoy was so numerous as to extend the whole way from Medina to Cairo; the first camel of the train entering the Holy City with its load, as the last of the uninterrupted line quitted Misr. The descriptions of the abundance this supply spread among the Arabs are indeed less miraculous, though such eloquence is displayed in painting the gastronomic delights of the hungry Mussulmans, in devouring the savoury food cooked with the fat of the beasts of burden which had transported it.45

The account of the canal given by the geographer Makrizy, requires to be transcribed in his own words, from the accurate summary which it contains of the later history of this great monument of civilization. "When the Most High," says the writer, "gave Islamism to mankind, and Amrou-Ben-el-A'ss conquered Egypt by the order of Omar-ben-âl-Khatâb, chief of the Faithful, he cleared out the canal in the year of the mortality. He carried it to the sea of Qolzoum, from which ships sailed to the Hedjâz, to Yemen, and to India. This canal remained open until the time when Mohammed-ben-Abdoullah-ben-El-Hosseïn-ben-Aly-ben-Aby-Thâleb revolted in the city of the Prophet (Medina) against Abou-dja'far-Abdoullah ben-Mohammed Al-Manssour, then caliph of Irâk. This prince immediately wrote to his lieutenant in Egypt, ordering him to fill up the canal of Qolzoum, that it might not serve to transport provisions to Medina. The order was executed, and all communication was cut off with the sea at Qolzoum. Since that time, matters have remained in the state we now see them."46 As the rebellion of Mohammed Abdoullah against the caliph, Al Manssour, occurred between the 145th and the 150th years of the Hegira, (A.D. 762-767,) the canal had remained open for about 125 years under the Arab government.

We have now traced the history of the canal to its close; and we believe our readers will allow that we have proved, by incontrovertible evidence, that a continued navigation from the Nile to the Red Sea existed from the time of Darius (B.C. 500) to the time of Al-Manssour, (A.D. 765,) with the interruption of a short period preceding the extinction of the Roman power in the east. It hardly requires any proof to establish that system of navigation, and a commercial route, which remained in use for nearly 1300 years, must have been based on the internal sources of Egypt, and been regarded as absolutely necessary, under every vicissitude of foreign trade, to the prosperity of the country. The great object of the canal was to afford a high-road for the exportation of the produce of Egypt; and its connexion with the Indian trade was merely a secondary and unimportant consideration. Its connexion with the existence of the agricultural, Egyptian, or Coptic population, was more immediate.

At present, the question of restoring the canal is solely connected with the Indian trade. We own we have very great doubts whether its re-establishment, if destined only to connect our lines of steam-packets from India to Suez, and from Southampton to Alexandria, would be found a profitable speculation. The tedious navigation of the Red Sea, and, we may almost add, of the Mediterranean, would render the route by the Cape preferable for sailing vessels; and we have not yet arrived at such perfection in the construction of steamers, as to contemplate their becoming the only vessels employed in the Indian trade. It appears to us, that before any reasonable hope of restoring the canal can be entertained, or, at least, before it can ever be kept open with profit, that Egypt must be again in a condition to employ the irrigable land on the banks of the canal for agricultural purposes. Unless the country be flourishing, the population increasing, and the canal constantly employed, it would be half-filled with the sand of the desert every year. On the other hand, as soon as a demand for more irrigable land is created by an augmented population, a canal of irrigation would soon be carried through the valley of Seba Biar; and the surplus produce of the Delta would again seek for a market on the shores of the Red Sea and in Arabia. Until these things happen, even should a canal be excavated, whether from Cairo to Suez, or from Suez to Tineh, during some pecuniary plethora in the city, we venture to predict that the Suez canal shares, or Mohammedan bonds, will be as disreputable a security as honest Jonathan's American repudiated stock, or the Greek bonds of King Otho not countersigned by Great Britain.

We cannot close this article without alluding to two able pamphlets, which have been recently published, recommending the formation of a canal from Suez to Tineh, as that line might be kept always open, from the elevation of the Red Sea above the Mediterranean.47 The subject has been ably treated by the French engineers in the great work on Egypt, and Monsieur Linant has since examined the question; but the information we possess on the effect of the currents and winds at Tineh, is not sufficient to enable any engineer to decide on the works which would be necessary to enable ships to enter the canal in bad weather. It is clear that a bar would immediately be formed; and almost as certain that any break-water but a floating one would soon be joined to the continent by a neck of sand. If it be possible to form any part at this point on the Egyptian coast, it could only be done at an enormous cost; and our information is at present too imperfect to warrant our entering on the subject. The question requires a more profound scientific examination than it has yet undergone.

One of the ablest scholars who has written on the subject of this canal, has advanced the opinion, that Nekos, the king of Egypt, who, Herodotus mentions, undertook the completion of this work, borrowed the idea of his project from the Greeks. Monsieur Letronne conjectures that he only imitated the plan, which is attributed to Periander, of having designed to cut through the isthmus of Corinth. Willing as we are to concede a great deal to Grecian genius, we are compelled to protest against the probability of the Egyptians having borrowed any project of canalization from the Greeks. We own we should entertain very great doubts whether Periander had ever uttered so much as a random phrase about cutting through the isthmus of Corinth, were it not that there are some historical grounds for believing that he was a professed imitator of Egypt. He had a nephew named Psammetichus, who must have been so called after the father of Nekos.48 All projects for making canals in Greece had a foreign origin, from the time Periander imitated Egyptian fashions, down to the days of the Bavarian regency, which talked about making a ship canal from the Piraeus to Athens, and instructed a commission to draw up a plan of canalization for the Hellenic kingdom, where every thing necessary is wanting—even to the water. The earlier projectors who proposed to cut through the isthmus of Corinth, after Periander, were the Macedonian adventurer Demetrius Poliorcetes, and the Romans, Julius Caesar, Caligula, Nero, and Herodes Atticas.49 We should not be surprised to see this notable project revived, or to hear that the Greeks were on the point of sinking new shafts at the silver mines of Laurium. A joint-stock company, either for the one or the other, would be quite as profitable to the capitalists engaged as the scheme of making sugar from beet-root at Thermopylae, which has found some unfortunate shareholders, both at Athens and Paris. Travellers, scholars, and antiquaries, would undoubtedly take more interest in the progress of the canal, and of the silver mine, than in the confection of the sugar.

There was another canal in Greece which proved a sad stumbling-block to the Roman satirist Juvenal, whose unlucky accusation of "lying Greece," is founded on his own ignorance of a fact recorded by Herodotus and Thucydides.

                       —"Creditur olim      Velificatus Athos, et quicquid Graecia mendax      Audet in historia."

The words of Herodotus and Thucydides, would leave no doubt of Xerxes having made a canal through the isthmus to the north of Mount Athos, in the mind of any but a Roman.50 But since there are modern travellers as ready to distrust the ancients, as a gentleman we once encountered at Athens was to doubt the moderns, we shall quote better evidence than any Greek. Our acquaintance of the Athenian inn, who had a very elegant appearance, appealed to us to confirm the Graecia mendax, saying, he had just returned from Marathon, and his guide had been telling him far greater lies than he ever heard from an Italian cicerone. "The fellow had the impudence to say, that his countrymen had defeated 500,000 Persians in the plain he showed me," said the gentleman in green. "Let alone the number—that fable might be pardoned—but he thought me such an egregious ass as not to know that the war was with the Turks, and not with the Persians at all." We bowed in amazement to find our English friend more ignorant than Juvenal. We shall now transcribe the observations of Colonel Leake, the most sharp-sighted and learned of the modern travellers who have visited the isthmus of Mount Athos:—"The modern name of this neck of land is próvlaka, evidently the Romanic form of the word [Greek: proaulax], having reference to the canal in front of the peninsula of Athos, which crossed the isthmus, and was excavated by Xerxes. It is a hollow between natural banks, which are well described by Herodotus as [Greek: kolônoi ou megaloi], the highest points of them being scarcely 100 feet above the sea. The lowest part of the hollow is only a few feet higher than that level. About the middle of the isthmus, where the bottom is highest, are some traces of the ancient canal; where the ground is lower, it is indicated only by hollows, now filled with water in consequence of the late rains. The canal seems to have been not more than sixty feet wide. As history does not mention that it was ever kept in repair after the time of Xerxes, the waters from the heights around have naturally filled it in part with soil in the course of ages. It might, however, without much labour, be renewed; and there can be no doubt that it would be useful to the navigation of the Egean, such is the fear entertained by the Greek boatmen of the strength and uncertain direction of the currents around Mount Athos."51

THE OLD SCOTTISH CAVALIER

I      I'll sing you a new song, that should make your heart beat high,      Bring crimson to your forehead, and the lustre to your eye;—      It is a song of olden time, of days long since gone by,      And of a Baron stout and bold, as e'er wore sword on thigh!          Like a brave old Scottish cavalier, all of the olden time! II      He kept his castle in the north, hard by the thundering Spey;      And a thousand vassals dwelt around, all of his kindred they.      And not a man of all that clan had ever ceased to pray      For the Royal race they loved so well, though exiled far away          From the steadfast Scottish cavaliers, all of the olden time. III      His father drew the righteous sword for Scotland and her claims,      Among the loyal gentlemen and chiefs of ancient names,      Who swore to fight or fall beneath the standard of King James,      And died at Killiecrankie pass, with the glory of the Graemes,          Like a true old Scottish cavalier, all of the olden time! IV      He never own'd the foreign rule, no master he obey'd,      But kept his clan in peace at home, from foray and from raid;      And when they ask'd him for his oath, he touch'd his glittering      blade,      And pointed to his bonnet blue that bore the white cockade,          Like a leal old Scottish cavalier, all of the olden time! V      At length the news ran through the land—THE PRINCE had come again!      That night the fiery cross was sped o'er mountain and through glen;      And our old Baron rose in might, like a lion from his den,      And rode away across the hills to Charlie and his men,          With the valiant Scottish cavaliers, all of the olden time! VI      He was the first that bent the knee when THE STANDARD waved abroad,      He was the first that charged the foe on Preston's bloody sod;      And ever, in the van of fight, the foremost still he trod,      Until, on bleak Culloden's heath, he gave his soul to God,          Like a good old Scottish cavalier, all of the olden time! VII      Oh! never shall we know again a heart so stout and true—      The olden times have pass'd away, and weary are the new:      The fair White Rose has faded from the garden where it grew,      And no fond tears but those of heaven the glorious bed bedew          Of the last old Scottish cavalier, all of the olden time! W.E.A.

TRADITIONS AND TALES OF UPPER LUSATIA

No. III THE DWARF'S WELL

We have been shown, in our two preceding pieces from Ernst Willkomm, Pathetic Fairies, and Fairies merry to rioting. Here we have, not without merriment either, Working Fairies. In the mines of the Upper Lusatian Belief, the tale of THE DWARF'S WELL strikes into a vein which our author has promised us, but of which we have not heretofore handled the ore. Here we shall see the imagination touching in some deeper sterner colours to the sketches flung forth by the fancy; and in the spirit of unreal creation, a wild self-will which rejoices to waft into the presence of the beautiful, and of unbridled laughter, cold blasts from the region of pure affright. There is in this, however, no prostration of strength—quite the reverse! Not a nervous and enfeebled sensibility, yielding itself up to a diseased taste for pain.—No child fascinated with fear, and straining its eyes to take in more horror. But here the unconquerable consciousness of strong life throws itself with an unmastered glee of battle, right into the thick of its mortal adversaries, to slay, and strip, and bind to its own triumphant chariot-wheels.

The Upper Lusatian Highlander, turned poet, dreaming at his discretion, amuses himself with converting terror and madness into merriment, and reconciles conflicting elements of invention—with an overpowering harmony?—No. But, by subjugating them all alike to one imperious lord, viz. to himself;—to his own pleasure. Hence, in the Traditions and Tales, in which he embodies his illusory creed of the Invisible, there is engendered an esthetical species, which waits, perhaps, for a name with us, and might accept that of the Ghastly, or at least, of the Ghostly-Humorous, the Gay-Horrible. The story of the PRIEST'S WELL soars boldly upon this pinion; that of the WILL-O'-THE-WISP HUSSAR has gone stark-raving in the same grimly-mirthful temper. The mind in which Burns imagined and chaunted his TAM-O'-SHANTER, is right down Upper Lusatian, in this key. Our Elves, however, are not yet witches.

The kinds of the spirits confine, upon every side, with one another, and the boundary lines vanish. Within the circumscription of the Fairy domain, an indeterminable difference appears betwixt the truest Fairies and the Dwarfs. The two sorts, or the two names, are sometimes brought into glaring opposition. Again, like factions made friends, they blend for a time indistinguishably. So, in the Persian belief, the ugly Dios, who may represent the Dwarfs of our west, are—under one aspect of the Fable—the implacable cannibal foes—under another,—the loving spouses of the beautiful Peris. Comparing the Fairies of our two former tales, and the Dwarfs of this, the reader will probably see in THOSE, the daintier, the more delicate: in THESE, a little more hardness of nature.

The great length of the story precludes all thoughts (be the opportunities what they may, and these are not deficient) of bringing its illustration from other expositors—Teutonic or otherwise-of the Fairy Lore.

THE DWARF'S WELL

"Nicholas Stringstriker was the most popular ale-house fiddler for a good twenty miles round, and consequently quite indispensable at all christenings, marriages, and wakes. Klaus knew this as well as every body else, and, like a wise man, did the best he could to turn his popularity to account—the more so, poor fellow! because he was obliged to put up with all kinds of ridicule and teasing. Stringstriker, you must know, was a most comical little fellow, with very small thin bandy legs, that had to bear the burden of a huge square trunk, which, in its turn, supported a big head that was for ever waggling to and fro, without affording the slightest indication of a neck. The entire little man measured exactly three feet five inches and an eighth, and he was best known to his acquaintance by the name of Dwarf-fiddler or Dwarf-piper; for the little gentleman smoked away for his life, and liked nothing better.

"So misshapen a figure, it may readily be supposed, made a very good target for the shafts of mockery. Nicholas, however, troubled himself but little about them; and it was small complaint you heard from him so long as he was well paid, got his savoury morsel, and, above all, a liberal supply of his choice favourite—Tobacco. True, folks might now and then, as the saying is, draw the cord too tight and be too hard upon the scraper; and then Klaus, like most deformed creatures, had wit and venom enough at his command, and could rid himself right easily of his tormentors.

"The Dwarf—it might be to render himself thoroughly independent, or, more likely still, to surround his diminutive individuality with an air of mystery—had abandoned his birth-place, and established himself about two miles away from it, near a singularly-formed sandstone rock, situated in a small but exceedingly pretty fir-wood, and commonly known by the name of the Bear's church. Here he spent his quiet life, wholly engaged in the practice of his art. Travellers taking their road by night, and in calm weather, from Bertsdorf to Hörnitz or over the Breitenberg to Gross-schönau were arrested by the exquisite strains, now touchingly plaintive, now joyously merry, that poured from Klaus's magical instrument; and many a happy soul, allured by the enchanting melody, lingered within sound of it, until wholly subdued and rendered powerless by awe and superstitious fear. Although by day the fiddler was visible to none, yet by night he was often seen waddling out of the wood and over the fields, on his way to a clear spring, whence he drew water for his housekeeping, which—to add to the mystery that he delighted to create—he doggedly looked after himself. This spring belonged to a substantial farmer in Bertsdorf, named Michael Simon, though called by the people Twirling-stick Mike, in commemoration of his cutting down yearly in his wood a handsome quantity of young trees, which he afterwards manufactured into twirling-sticks. Simon not only was master of a good farm, but proprietor likewise of the village tavern, in which he gave a dance every Sunday, taking care to secure for the festivity the services of Stringstriker, to whose fiddle, it was well known, the lads and lasses invariably danced an hour longer than to that of any other scraper in the country.

"The visits of Stringstriker to the well were a continual vexation to the farmer. The Dwarf asked no man's permission to draw his water, but helped himself as often and as liberally as he thought proper, without the slightest regard to the wants of other people, which were often left unsatisfied by his wantonness and extravagance. It was in consequence of this audacious appropriation, that the spring by degrees acquired the name of THE DWARF'S WELL. Countless were the complaints and menaces of Mike—numberless the promised threshings, if he did not give up his thieving; but the effect of them all upon Klaus was to make him laugh outright, fill his pipe, and strike up a jolly tune upon his fiddle.