But there was a last-minute crisis. A mere fortnight before the opening date, a large kidney-shaped ridge of rock, too hard to be worked by the dredgers, was unexpectedly struck at the Serapeum. It projected so far above the bed of the Canal as to leave only ten feet of water. Never, until this emergency, had blasting been tried under water. The experts were pessimistic: the Canal, they feared, could not now open on time. But Lesseps exclaimed to them: Get gunpowder from Cairo, masses of gunpowder, and if we can't blow up the rock we shall blow up ourselves. The channel was cleared, with twenty-four hours to spare, down to a depth of sixteen feet instead of the required twenty-six, and for the opening convoy ships were limited to those drawing less. Thus the Suez Canal, a hundred miles long, eventually twentysix feet deep, seventy-two feet wide at the bottom but some two to three hundred feet wide at the top, was ready to be thrown open to the steamships of the world. Man had irrevocably joined the two seas; the Sea of Pearls and the Sea of Coral, as Lesseps quoted, fulfilling an ancient legend, and possibly re-establishing a union which dated back to a remote geological age.
 

 On October 15, 1869 a  privileged selection of guests, reached Alexandria in two ships from Marseilles. They were met by Lesseps in person, and proceeded to Cairo by train. Next to Zola and Dumas, the most notable writer among them was Theophile Gautier. 
Arriving in Cairo the guests were distributed, according to their varying degrees of distinction, among hotels of varying quality. Among them was Louise Colet; in her time a stormy Romantic poetess, muse of Victor Hugo, confidante of Madame Recamier, and mistress of Flaubert. 

On October 18 the guests were received in audience by the Khidiwiy Isma`iyl. He addressed them as an accomplished agriculturist and industrialist, well aware of the value of his country's resources and supporting his statement with figures. To dispel the common apprehension prevaling among his foreign guests, he assured them, that the Egyptian fallah, was not unhappy. He reaps from his patrimony more than could be reaped elsewhere. His troubles are lessened by the fertility of his soil! That evening he gave a gala reception at the Qasr al- Niyl Palace, at which Madame Colet, dreaming of Arabian Nights entertainments, was disillusioned by a counterfeit of the Tuileries, with frock-coated guests and a colourless performance of a Caprice by Alfred de Musset.

Meanwhile Lesseps, familiar to all as Monsieur le Comte, kept open house in the Hotel d'Orient, which he had made his headquarters. Modest in comfort but French in fare, it overlooked the Izbakiyah Gardens, once a lake overlooked by the palace in which Napoleon had lodged during his brief occupation of Cairo. It lay on the fringe of the old city, so rich in mosques and monuments. The visitors duly appreciated, regretting only that their facades had been painted up for the occasion with a thick red and white wash, designed to brighten them but in fact obscuring much of their fine Arab stonework and ornamentation.

On October 22 the Empress Eugénie and her suite reached Alexandria in the Imperial yacht, the Aigle, from Istanbuwl (Constantinople). En route she had paid unofficial visits to Venice and Athens, but her visit to the Sultan was official, and inspired by diplomatic motives. She hoped to soothe his irritation at the fact that the Khidiwiy  had invited Heads of State to the inaugural ceremonies without so much as informing him that any were planned.

The French Empress was handsomely received by the Sultan, and lodged in the BeylerbeyPalace on the Asiatic side of the Bosporus, with the luxurious imperial barge at her personal disposal. To the Grand Vizier she explained that she herself, at the Paris Exhibition of 1867, had expressed a desire to attend the opening, and that theKhidiwiy thus had no choice but to invite her. On receiving her invitation she had enquired whether the Sultan too was invited. To this the Khidiwiy replied "that he could not without  impertinence invite his sovereign to a house which was the sovereign's own."

She soon felt at home, for as she wrote to the Emperor, the country reminded her strongly of Spain. The music, the dancing, the food seemed identical. The dances in the harem resembled those of the Spanish gipsies, but were perhaps more indecent. Much of her time was devoted to sightseeing. Her guide was the distinguished French Egyptologist, Mariette Pasha, a huge man, forbidding but courteous, in black spectacles and a red tarbuwsh, who had been launched on his career with the help of Lesseps, building the Cairo Museum and establishing an Egyptian Department of Antiquities.

In the course of a tour of Upper Egypt, he found the Empress a willing and well-informed pupil, since she had taken a brief preparatory course in Egyptology in Paris under a young professor named Maspero. A visit to the Pyramids was postponed until her return to Cairo, since Isma`iyl had ordered a seven-mile carriage road to be built for her, from the city to Giyzah, and it was not yet ready. Pending its completion no foreigners were permitted to visit the Pyramids, and an Englishman, who obstinately insisted on doing so, soon saw the reason why. For the road was being built by intensive forced labour, spurred on by an unusually free use of the kurbag [whip]) (in Edward Dicey.(2)The Story of the Khedivate.)
 
 

Unfortunately Verdi at first turned down the proposal, which in any case he could hardly have executed in time for the occasion  it took longer to turn out an opera than to run up an opera house, as Isma`iyl now did, from lath and plaster in an elegant rococo style. On reading Mariette's synopsis of his story, Verdi changed his mind in the following year, and Aida was first performed in Cairo in 1871 - Meanwhile the Opera House was opened, early in November 1869, with a performance of Rigoletto, preceded by a solemn cantata on the Khidiwiy 's social and economic achievements for his country, embellished by a corps de ballet of forty young Italian girls, whose virtue was protected behind bars in the neighbouring police station. 

The opera was only momentarily marred, at the second performance, by a fire on the stage, which drove the actors to jump into the orchestra pit until it was extinguished, while Isma`iyl, from his box, calmed the audience. This launched a season of Italian opera, which added to Cairo's gaities throughout the winter months:

By now the khidiwiy's nine hundred remaining guests had begun to swarm into Egypt, a self-inflicted plague as the times describe them, overcrowding the hotels, and placing much strain on the to lodge, feed and entertain them.  For the supply of food, wine, waiters, linen, plate and tents, the Egyptian Government had invited the leading caterers of the Levant to submit tenders, on the understanding that the contract would go to the lowest. But, according to popular rumour, hints were given that it would go in fact to the competitor who offered Isma`iyl himself the largest commission--a business deal robbing Peter to pay Paul, since the Treasury of the Khidiwiy and his Government were one and the same!

Most of the newcomers proceeded direct, in slow and congested trains, to Isma`iyliyah , which was to be the centre of the inaugural ceremonies. Here the Khidiwiy  had to cater in all for some six thousand guests. The Europeans were accommodated for the most part in long lines of tents, well-furnished and carpeted, with a marquee, containing a huge permanent buffet, to each cantonment, while the Canal engineers and officials gave up houses and gardens for conversion into dormitories. To help feed and serve them Isma`iyl  imported five hundred cooks and a thousand servants from such places as Trieste, Genoa, Leghorn and Marseilles. Each day they consumed whole flocks of sheep, which arrived each morning to be killed and roasted in the evening, in gargantuan and pantagruelian kitchens. Meanwhile a ship had arrived from Bordeaux with a whole cargo of excellent wines, so that soon the shores of Lake Timsah were littered with empty bottles.

Hundreds of Arab bedouin chieftains and dignitaries had come with their tribes and their herds from all parts of the Islamic world, their encampment becoming a huge native town in the desert. One aged Shaykh, asked why he had brought his tribe so far, could only say he believed that the French girl (in Arabic bint) wanted to see them. Isma`iyliyah, as it awaited the ships,  a fair of St. Cloud multiplied by thirty thousand Arab horsemen and transported to beneath the skies of Egypt. 

Meanwhile, in the harbor of Port Sa`iyd, a large concourse of ships was assembling, ready to pass, on the appointed date, from sea to sea. The first royal guests to arrive were the Prince and Princess of the Netherlands, in their yacht. Next came Francis Joseph, the Emperor of Austria, in his own, with a naval frigate to escort him. Visiting Jerusalem en route, he had, in his determination to arrive on time, made a hazardous embarkation in a storm from an open beach at Yaffah. He was closely followed by another royal yacht, containing the Crown Prince of Prussia.

That evening the Empress, incognito, walked through the streets of Port Sa`iyd by the light of the fireworks.  All agreed that here was a first-class port, with a great commercial future ahead of it. Already, before the official opening, it was coming to be used as such, its ships conveying not merely coal to Suez but pilgrims en route to Makkah, and exporting cotton and cereals to the other ports of the Mediterranean.

Then the historic day dawned on which the Suez Canal was to be put to the ultimate test. The date was November 17, 1869, Lesseps's sixty-fourth birthday. In the course of the previous night there was a last-minute mishap. An Egyptian corvette, the Latif, had been sent ahead with a French ship to try out the channel. Before reaching al-Qantarah her captain made a false manoeuver; she strayed from her well-marked course and ran aground on the bank, protruding into the canal. A salvage boat, sent from Port Sa`iyd, failed to dislodge her. At three o'clock in the morning the Khidiwiy himself,  in a naval frigate to receive his guests on arrival, turned back, and met Lesseps at the spot.

The ships of the convoy, forty-six in number and divided into five divisions, each a thousand metres apart, left at five or ten minute intervals from eight-thirty in the morning onwards. The Aigle sailed at the head of it, entering the Canal between two colossal pyramids of wood, fashioned for the occasion. The royal and ambassadorial yachts, with their escorting warships, followed. The Russian ship failed to get into her allotted place in the line, thus losing precedence to the Psyche, with the British Ambassador on board, which went ahead of her. The Peluse, pride of the local French mercantile marine, with the officials and guests of the Company aboard, brought up the rear of the first division--and, from its size, was to run once or twice into trouble. 

All went well, and soon the convoy was passing smoothly through the cutting of al-Gisr. Pressed together an its ridge and strung out along the banks, was an immense crowd from Ismailia. At five-thirty, as Fromentin (who had come to Egypt with his notebook, not to paint but to write) described the scene:
 

"a light coil of smoke and the tip of a high mast appears above the high sandbanks of the Northern Canal. From one mast of the ship, still hidden, flies the Imperial flag of France. She is the Aigle. She passes beneath us slowly, her wheels barely turning, with a cautious prudence which adds to the solemnity of the moment. Finally she emerges into the lake. Salvoes of artillery from all the batteries salute her, the immense crowd applauds, it is truly wonderful. The Empress, from the high poop, waves her handkerchief. She has M. de Lesseps at her side; she forgets to shake his hand before this great multitude, come from all parts of Europe and overcome with emotion. For a moment the crowd stood in breathless silence. Then it burst into cheers, throwing hats in the air and embracing, crying: Long live the Empress! Long live Lesseps !' Entering the waters of Timsah, the Aigle was saluted by a French and three Egyptian warships, which had sailed up from Suez. As soon as she was at anchor the Khedive hurried on board, paid his respects to the Empress and hugged Lesseps in a warm embrace"

That evening Lesseps presided over a banquet to the members of an International Commercial Congress of the European Chambers of commerce, brought together for the inauguration. In this influential international company, he shrewdly forsook rhetoric and conventional phrases of congratulation at what had been done. He stressed instead, in practical and critical terms, what remained to be done. He enlarged on the outstanding legal problem, that of the reform of the old system of Consular tribunals in Egypt, based on Capitulatory rights ceded to each power by the Sultan. This was now seriously impeding the work of the Company and the country's commercial development. A joint Commission, under the terms of the final Conventions, was now considering the problems. Lesseps urged his audience to put pressure on its Governments to modify their several rights and formulate a new joint system. The Egyptian Government was willing; but the French Government, he frankly stated, was proving obstructive. The Canal Company had thus drawn up a petition, and for this he begged international support.

That afternoon there was an equestrian fantasia, with displays by galloping Egyptian cavalry and Beduin horsemen, firing in the air as they rode, and a six-mile race of camels, with screaming Arabs on their humps. Arab musicians performed on flutes and tambourines and big drums, while European ladies drove in their carriages through the stifling crowds and the shifting sands, upright on cushions in grande toilette as though attending the races at Longchamps. 

In the evening the Khidiwiy gave a great ball for the Empress in the palace which he had hurriedly built in the Arabesque style. Its upper floor was not yet finished, and its gilded rooms, vast as they were, were too small to contain in comfort a concourse of six thousand guests, of whom two thousand were said to have come uninvited.

Amid the sand-dunes a huge supper-room had been contrived, with long tables laid for a thousand and an enclosure at the end for the royal and official visitors, transformed into a lantern-lit tropical garden, with plants brought from the horticultural Gardens of Gaziyrah in Cairo. The menu of twenty-four dishes included Poisson a la Reunion des Deux Mers, Roast Beef a l'Anglaise, and a salad of Crevettes de Suez au Cresson. The meal was not served until one o'clock in the morning, when savage famine could alone excuse the conduct of the ferocious multitude,  certainly presented a scene from civilized Europe which astonished any onlooking Beduins or native Egyptians.

Soon the ships were sailing into the Bitter Lakes, this inland sea, with waves crisping in the breeze, under the bright sun, filling the whole Desert with the joyous noise of rushing water. 

The Aigle lay for the night in the Bitter Lakes, with fifteen other vessels, saluting each other with rockets as their royal passengers exchanged visits after dark. Next morning, passing easily through the troublesome cutting of Shaluwf, where men were still at work, the convoy saw the veritable Red Sea ahead of it, and was soon sliding into this narrow neck of water which springs from the vast oceans that wash India and China and Western Africa.

Following it up with a despatch, he recorded:The arrival of about thirty-five ships in the Red Sea from Port Sa`iyd drawing from ten to seventeen feet water has established the passage of the Canal, which is a work of vast magnitude, conceived r and carried out by the energy and perseverance of M. Lesseps. Mr. Elliot, the British Ambassador, confirmed the news to the Foreign Office. He agreed with the Admiral that much work still remained to be done, in teams of deepening and widening, before the Canal would be ready to take the larger vessels for which it was designed. Nevertheless, the opening had been a complete success, and this vast undertaking may now be regarded as triumphantly accomplished.
 

The British Foreign Office, on behalf of Her Majesty's Government, sent a telegram of congratulation to Lesseps on the establishment of a new channel of communication between East and West. His indomitable perseverance in surmounting obstacles, the necessary result both of physical circumstances and of a local state of society to which such undertakings were unknown, had been finally rewarded by a brilliant success. 

Having reached Suez, the crowned heads departed by train with the khidiwiy to Cairo, where festivities continued for a further week.

On the day after her departure Ferdinand de Lesseps, having united two oceans and converted Africa into an island as the Times put it terminated his labors appropriately by marrying a young and charming lady. His bride was Louise-Helene Autard de Bragard (2), daughter of an old friend in Mauritius, whom he had first met at one of the Empress's weekly receptions, and who had been his principal personal guest at the opening ceremonies.

By the end of the festivities, the khidiwiy had contributed to the cost of the Suez Canal a sum amounting to some 240 million francs (just short of 10 million). His contribution consisted of 87 million francs in share capital, 124 million francs in indemnities -in effect the recovery of lands and rights which had originally belonged to him-and 30 million francs in interest on arrears on these sums. It amounted to more than half the total cost of construction- 450million francs (£18 million) --a sum more than double the original estimate. It took no account of the cost of public works indirectly concerned with the Canal mainly the construction of the harbor at Suez and of the westerly stretch of the Sweet Water Canal which amounted to some 55 million francs; nor of the incidental expenses of Nuwbar's missions abroad or of the lavish festivities staged for the opening of the Canal. In all, Isma`iyl's final Canal debt amounted to some 400 million francs  (£16 million), one-fifth of that final total debt, in foreign loans, which was to lead him to bankruptcy sevenyears after it was opened to traffic. Such was the exorbitant cost to Egypt of a Canal from which posterity to Egyptians remained in doubt and instead would contribute to long and turbulent times ahead.

(To be continued)