BABYLON AND PERSIA

390 MEDIA^ BABYLON, AND PERSIA.northward until it came to anchor in the Bay ofSuez. Having thus tested and practically estab¬lished the possibility of a direct Indian route, Darei¬os proceeded to finish a canal, begun once on a timeby Ramses II., then continued centuries later byNecho I., for the purpose of uniting the Nile withthe Red Sea consequently, indirectly, the Mediter¬ranean with the Indian Ocean. Three granite steleshave been discovered at different points of the canal,bearing sculptures and a fourfold set of inscriptions,in Persian, Scythian, and Assyrian cuneiform, andin Egyptian hieroglyphics ; on one of the steles aprofile face could be made out, which appears to bean attempt at a real portrait of Dareios. This crea¬tion of three great statesmen and conquerors evi¬dently was premature, too much ahead of the timesto be generally appreciated, for the canal soon fellinto neglect, and though it was cleared of the sandthat choked it, and deepened some two hundredyears later, it was once more, and this time finally,forgotten and disused. It was reserved for our ownage to resume the work and carry it out in a newand probably indestructible form. In the introduc¬tion of a uniform gold and silver coinage Dareioswas more successful ; but the Persian empire was toovast, and its component provinces too many andvaried in race, culture, and customs to allow ofcarrying out the reform to its full extent, and thoughhe consistently tried to call in all the different localcoinages by receiving them for taxes, then weighingthem, smelting them down, and recoihing them inthe royal mint after the established standard, we do