Egypt and the Sudan: Handbook for Travellers

1908

Special Collections DT45 B351 1908

Leipzig: Karl Baedeker

This 1908 Baedeker guidebook to Egypt and the Sudan suggests that anyone who wanted to travel through the 200-kilometre Suez Canal (top middle square above) should do so on a large steamer, as one could not see over the banks of the Canal in a smaller vessel. The guide goes on to advise that the voyage from Port Said to Suez, on this ‘great international artery of traffic’, took between 15 and 22 hours. Today it takes between 12 and 15 hours. In 1870, a year after it opened, 486 vessels sailed from one sea to another through the Canal; today, it averages 50 vessels per day that contain 300 million tons of cargo every year.