In the early 1850s the French diplomat and engineer Ferdinand de Lesseps (1805 1894) revived earlier French plans to build a canal through the Isthmus of Suez, and, thanks to his good relations with the Viceroy of Egypt, won approval for the project in the face of British and Turkish opposition. This 1870 lecture reveals de Lesseps' enchantment with the desert and its people, his determination to complete the canal, and his annoyance at British antagonism. By 1875, when this English translation by Sir Henry Wolff was published, the canal had been open for six years and the British position...