海底兩萬里 第350期 第23章 珊瑚王國(49)

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"Surely, but of great use to the world at large," Captain Nemo said. "The ancients well understood the usefulness to commerce of connecting the Red Sea with the Mediterranean, but they never dreamed of cutting a canal between the two, and instead they picked the Nile as their link. If we can trust tradition, it was probably Egypt's King Sesostris who started digging the canal needed to join the Nile with the Red Sea. What's certain is that in 615 B.C. King Necho II was hard at work on a canal that was fed by Nile water and ran through the Egyptian plains opposite Arabia. This canal could be traveled in four days, and it was so wide, two triple-tiered galleys could pass through it abreast. Its construction was continued by Darius the Great, son of Hystaspes, and probably completed by King Ptolemy II. Strabo saw it used for shipping; but the weakness of its slope between its starting point, near Bubastis, and the Red Sea left it navigable only a few months out of the year. This canal served commerce until the century of Rome's Antonine emperors; it was then abandoned and covered with sand, subsequently reinstated by Arabia's Caliph Omar I, and finally filled in for good in 761 or 762 A.D. by Caliph Al-Mansur, in an effort to prevent supplies from reaching Mohammed ibn Abdullah, who had rebelled against him.

“不錯，不過對全世界很有用。”船長回答，“古時的人很明白，在紅海與地中海之間建立交通，對于他們的商業(yè)有很大的好處，可是他們沒有想到發(fā)掘一條直通的運(yùn)河，他們是利用尼羅河來作居間。按照傳說，這條連接尼羅河和紅海的運(yùn)河，很可能在薛索斯土利斯王朝就開始有了。其中確定的事實(shí)是，紀(jì)元前615年，尼哥斯進(jìn)行了一條運(yùn)河的工程，引尼羅河水，穿過與阿拉伯相望的埃及平原。這條運(yùn)河上溯航行需要四天的時間，河寬是兩艘有三排槳的船可以并行無阻。運(yùn)河工程由伊他斯比的兒子大流士繼續(xù)進(jìn)行，大約在蒲圖連美二世時代完工，史杜拉賓看見了這河作航行使用。不過在運(yùn)河近布巴斯提地方的起點(diǎn)和紅海之間的何床坡度大小，一年中只有幾個月可以行船。直到安敦難時代，這運(yùn)河一直是商業(yè)貿(mào)易的途徑：后來，由于‘哈利發(fā)’峨默爾命令把運(yùn)河放棄，就淤塞了，隨后又修復(fù)起來； 761年或762年，‘哈利發(fā)’阿利·蒙索爾要阻止糧食運(yùn)到反抗他的穆罕默德·賓·阿比多拉那里，這運(yùn)河便完全被：填平了。”