The New International Encyclopædia/Chesney, Francis Rawdon

CHESNEY, Francis Rawdon (1789-1872). A British soldier and explorer. In 1829 he inspected the route of the Suez Canal and proved the undertaking to be feasible, so that De Lesseps forty years afterwards styled him the ‘Father of the Suez Canal.’ He is especially known, however, as the explorer of the Euphrates, and the founder of the overland route to India by way of that river. He wrote: Expedition for the Survey of the Euphrates and Tigris (1850), and Narrative of the Euphrates Expedition (1868). Consult his Life, by his wife and daughter, edited by Stanley Lane-Poole (London, 1885).