SHIP NAVIGATION
BETWEEN THE
MEDITERRANEAN AND RED SEAS,
Having had my attention directed to the question of establishing a Ship Navigation between the Mediterranean and Red Seas, the following observations are the results of my investigation:
The authorities consulted on the subject have been, first, the maps and description of the French Survey of Egypt in 1799; second, an excellent article in the Edinburgh Philosophical Journal for October, 1825, by Charles Maclaren, Esq., embodying the particulars of the above- named Survey; third, the Report of a Select Committee of the House of Commons on the subject of Steam Navigation with India, in 1834; and, lastly, an article on the same subject in the Foreign Quarterly Review for 1836.
We learn from the French Survey, corroborated by more recent testimony, that the least distance between the two seas is about seventy-five English miles, that is, in a straight line from the head of the Gulph of Suez to the shore of the Mediterranean Sea in the Bay of Tineh (near the ancient Pelusium); that the tides at Suez are from five to six feet of rise and fall, but that in the Bay of Tineh there are no tides, though the level of the sea there, owing to particular winds, varies to the amount of one foot.
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