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and gravel, the whole of the channel appears as though but recently left dry.

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In page 474 of his Illustrations of the Geography of Herodotus,' Major Rennell has the following paragraph on the subject of the ancient canal communicating between the Red Sea and the Nile: 'It is confidently reported that the traces of the eastern extremity of the canal are also visible near Adjeroud, and thence toward the Bay of Suez. Adjeroud, as we have seen, stands at no great distance from the hilly tract which extends to the northwest from the shore of that bay.' Pococke says, (vol. 1, p. 134,) Part of the way from Adjeroud to Suez is in a sort of fossée, that is thought to be the canal of Trajan, and seems to have run close to the west end of the old city;' (by which it may be concluded Kolzoum is intended; although, in page 133, he seems to consider these ruins as belonging to the ancient Arsinoë.) M. Niebuhr remarked the same appearance, but was in doubt whether it was a part of a canal, or the bed of a torrent; for, by the herbage growing in it, water must have recently flowed through it. (Voyage en Arabie, vol. 1, p. 204.)

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Dr. Pococke also says, page 132, 'From Adjeroud we went on south toward Suez, in a sort of hollow ground, in which, as I shall observe, the sea might formerly come.' And he remarks afterward, page 180, If Heroöpolis was on the most northern height I have mentioned, (he having supposed Adjeroud to be the site of that city,) the Red Sea must have lost ground; and, indeed, by the situation of places, there is a great appearance of it; the valleys and the high ground, with broken cliffs, looking very much like such an alteM. Niebuhr, in his Description de l'Arabie,' p. 354, and Volney, in his Travels in Egypt and Syria,' vol. 1, chap. 14, describe the same kind of hollow to the extent of four or five miles to the northward of Suez, (Volney says two leagues,) and which, from all accounts, must be the deserted bed of the sea, or rather that bed filled up with sand, to a height above the ordinary level of the sea, in the course of its gradual retreat since the earliest times.

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The error of Dr. Pococke, in supposing Adjeroud to be the site of Heroöpolis, is more than manifest from its relative situation only; beside which, there is nothing even in its neighborhood which could indicate the remains of an ancient settlement there. His description of the fossée, or hollow ground, between that place and Suez, is, however, perfectly correct; though, from its extreme breadth, irregularity, and general form, the supposition of its being the canal of Trajan must have been extremely forced. Niebuhr, in remarking the same appearance, more reasonably supposed it to be the bed of a torrent; but the observations of Volney, and the conclusions of Rennell, are still more satisfactory, in conceiving it to be the deserted bed of the sea; though even then, a period must be assigned to such gradual retreat as anterior to the existence of Kolzoum, the remains of which are at this moment so close to the water's edge, that since the destruction of that city, no farther retreat of the sea can have taken place.

Having this fossée, and Adjeroud also, considerably on our left, we rode, for upward of three hours, beyond its mouth, and at least four hours beyond Suez, in the very bed of the ancient canal itself,

following it in all its curves, the general direction of the whole being thus far northerly. It appears not to have been lined with masonry, the embankments of the soil originally thrown up still remaining. In some parts, the channel has been so filled up as to leave the limits of its width scarcely perceptible, while in others it is now more than twenty feet in depth; nor does its destruction appear to have been, as some have supposed, from the shifting nature of the sands around it; for the whole of the ground through which it was thus far cut, is firm, gravelly soil, mixed with earth, a fine layer of which now covers the surface of the bed. The uniformity of its breadth is admirable, scarcely ever exceeding or falling short of a hundred feet.

That the communication between the Mediterranean and the Red Sea had been attempted, by opening a canal from the Nile, no one had denied; but its completion, or actual discharge into the latter, had been a subject of question and dispute, until the masterly and profound discussion of Rennell seemed to have set the matter at rest; and the materials on which Arrowsmith's excellent chart was formed, removed even the possibility of doubt. It was a high satisfaction to me, therefore, when treading on this disputed ground, to recapitulate the authorities on which this historical fact was founded, and to compare, as we went along, the features yet distinguishable with the original descriptions scattered through these early records. As they were among the extracted memoranda, intended to assist my observations on this journey, I cannot do better than recapitulate them here.

Herodotus (Euterpe, cap. 158,) says, ' Psammitichus had a son whose name was Necos, by whom he was succeeded in his authority. This prince first commenced that canal leading to the Red Sea, which Darius, King of Persia, afterward continued. The length of this canal is equal to a four days' voyage, and is wide enough to admit two trirèmes abreast. The water enters it from the Nile, a little above the city of Bubastis; it terminated in the Red Sea, not far from Patumos, an Arabian town. They began to sink the canal in that part of Egypt which is nearest to Arabia. Contiguous to it is a mountain which stretches toward Memphis, and contains quarries of stone. Commencing at the foot of this, it extends from west to east, through a considerable tract of country, and where a mountain opens to the south is discharged into the Arabian Gulf. In the prosecution of this work under Necos, no less than one hundred thousand men perished. He at length desisted from his undertaking, being admonished by an oracle that all his labor would turn to the advantage of a barbarian.'

Strabo, pages 803 and 804, says: There is another canal terminating at the Arabian Gulf, and the city of Arsinoë sometimes called Cleopatris. It passes through those called the Bitter Lakes, whose waters indeed were formerly bitter, but which have been sweetened since the cutting of this canal, by an admixture with those of the Nile, and now abound with delicate fish, and are crowded with water fowl. This canal was first made by Sesostris, before the war of Troy. Some say that the son of Psammitichus, (Necho,) just began the work, and then died. The first Darius carried on the undertaking, but desisted from finishing it, on a false opinion that as the Red

Sea is higher than Egypt, the cutting of the Isthmus between them would necessarily lay that country under water. The Ptolemies disproved this error, and by means of wears, or locks, rendered the canal navigable to the Sea, without obstruction or inconvenience. Near to Arsinoe stand the cities Heroum and Cleopatris, the latter of which is on that recess of the Arabian Gulf which penetrates into Egypt. Here are harbors, and dwellings, and several canals, with lakes adjacent to them. The canal leading to the Red Sea begins at Phaccusa, to which the village Philon is contiguous.' Diodorus, lib. 1, c. 3, says: From Pelusium to the Arabian Gulf, a canal was opened. Necho, son of Psammitichus, first began the work; after him Darius, the Persian, carried it on, but left it unfinished, being told that if he cut through the isthmus, Egypt would be laid under water; for that the Red Sea lay higher than Egypt. The last attempt was made by Ptolemy the Second, who succeeded, by means of a new canal with sluices, which were opened and shut as convenience required. The canal opened by Ptolemy was called after his name, and fell into the Red Sea at Arsinoë.'

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Pliny, lib. 6, chap. 20, says: Sesostris, King of Egypt, was the first that planned the scheme of uniting the Red Sea with the Nile, by a navigable canal of sixty-two miles, which is the space that intervenes between them. In this he was followed by Darius, King of Persia, and also by Ptolemy, of Egypt, the second of that name, who made a canal of one hundred feet wide, by thirty in depth, continuing it thirty-seven and a half miles to the Bitter Fountains. At this point the work was then interrupted, for it was found that the Red Sea lay higher than the land of Egypt by three cubits, and a general inundation was feared. But some will have it, that the true cause was, that if the sea was let into the Nile, the water of it, of which alone the inhabitants drink, would be spoiled.'

All that could be said toward the reconciliation of those differing testimonies, as to the projectors and finishers of this work, has been already so satisfactorily done by Rennell, that there remains nothing to add on that point; but with respect to its having really been completed at all, which has been doubted by some, on the testimony of Pliny, (although Herodotus, Strabo, and Diodorus Siculus are agreed as to its having been finished, and differ only in respectively ascribing its completion to Darius and to Ptolemy,) ocular testimony is perhaps the most satisfactory, and this I felt much gratification in possessing.

I cannot help remarking, that while the description of Herodotus, as to the point of the canal opening from the Nile, its course from west to east, and its discharging into the Red Sea, where a mountain opens to the south, (meaning no doubt Mount Adaga,) is clear and satisfactory, while Strabo also defines it as terminating at the Arabian Gulf, and Diodorus speaks of its falling into the Red Sea, at Arsinoë, one cannot conclude from Pliny, whether the work which he describes was commenced to be opened from the Nile, or from the Red Sea. Taking his distance from the source of the undertaking to the Bitter Lakes, at thirty-seven and a half miles, one would rather infer that he meant the latter, a supposition which is strengthened by the cause he assigns for its discontinuance; namely, a discovery that the level

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of the gulf was higher than that of the river, and a fear of letting the waters of the Sea into those of the Nile, an evil which could be well provided against, if it were at the river that the canal originated, but which could only threaten an inundation when the stream was made to flow toward the river from the Sea.

The breadth and depth of the bed through which we had travelled this morning, corresponded exactly with the dimensions given by Pliny, as one hundred feet by thirty, allowing for the depositions which must have taken place in those parts the least filled up by time; because, as I before observed, it every where preserved that breadth, with admiral regularity, and was in many places more than twenty feet in depth at the present moment.

May it not have been, then, that the canal of Darius having fallen into ruin, or continuing to be navigable no farther than from the Nile to the Bitter Lakes, Ptolemy attempted to reopen the communication by cutting anew or clearing out the remaining portion between Arsinoe and that place? Such was the suggestion which presented itself to my mind upon the spot, as reconciling apparently discordant

testimonies; because, at the same time that this would admit the fact of its completion by Darius, which Herodotus so often and so positively asserts, it would also correspond with the account of Strabo, that the Ptolemies rendered this ruined rather than unfinished canal of Darius, again navigable to the Sea, with the testimony of Strabo, that the canal opened by Ptolemy was called after his name, and fell into the Red Sea at Arsinoë, and with the description given by Pliny of the second Ptolemy making a canal of one hundred feet wide, by thirty in depth, continuing it thirty-seven and a half miles, to the Bitter Fountains. How quickly such ruin could take place, from neglect, may be inferred from the fact, quoted in a note of Rennell's, who says: It would seem that the canal of Ptolemy did not remain open to the time of Cleopatra, since her ships were dragged across the Isthmus.' Plutarch says the distance was thirty-six miles. Possibly that portion of the canal between the Bitter Lake and Arsinoë, may be the part intended, which same space I have supposed to be meant by Pliny's distance of thirty-seven and a half miles, as before adverted to.

In the Life of Mark Anthony, mention is made of this excursion of Cleopatra, from Alexandria to Arsinoë, or as some called it, Cleopatris. She undertook the voyage by the canal, but on arriving at the Shallow Lakes, called the Bitter Lakes, and sometimes the Bitter Fountains, through part of which the canal ran, it was found that, from neglect, the sands had been permitted to accumulate, and the splendid barges and galleys, constituting the fleet of the queen and her retinue, grounded; but the rowers and steersmen being ordered to lighten them, for the purpose of floating them farther on, they applied their strength no longer to the oars, but actually drew them across the sands, till the canal became sufficiently deep to receive and float them onward on its bosom to the city of their destination. The description of those magnificent barges in which this luxurious Queen of the East was wont to perform her voyages, harmonizes with the gorgeous splendor by which her court and person were always surrounded.

'The barge she sat in, like a burnished throne,
Burnt on the water: the poop was beaten gold,
Purple the sails, and so perfumed, that

The winds were love-sick with them; the oars were silver,
Which to the tune of flutes kept stroke, and made

The water, which they beat, to follow faster,

As amorous of their strokes. For her own person,
It beggard all description. At the helm,

A seeming mermaid steers; the silken tackle
Swell with the touches of those flower-soft hands,
That yarely frame the office; from the barge,

A strange invisible perfume hits the sense
Of the adjacent wharf: the city cast
Her people out upon her; and Anthony,
Enthroned in the market-place did sit alone,
Whistling to the air, which but for vacancy
Had gone to gaze on Cleopatra too,
And made a gap in Nature.'

To resume the journal of our route. After having travelled all the morning in the bed of the ancient canal, but without being able to discover a vestige of any thing like masonry, or indication of the sluices by which its waters were said to have been regulated, we had lost at noon, all traces of its course, though we continued our direction still northerly, inclining two or three points to the west, until we gained the site of the Bitter Lakes, as they were called by the ancients, and named the Salt Marshes, in more modern maps. We traversed in every direction, the desert, for a diameter of ten miles, having fleet trotting dromedaries beneath us, without finding the least portion of water, although it had evidently been the receptacle of an extensive lake, and has its bed at this moment below the level of the sea at Suez. The soil here differs from all around it. On leaving the last traces of the canal, we had entered upon a loose shifting sand; here we found a firm clay mixed with gravel, and though perfectly dry, its surface was incrusted over with a strong salt.

On leaving the site of these now evaporated lakes, we entered upon a loose and shifting sand again, like that which Pliny describes when speaking of the roads from Pelusium across the sands of the desert, in which he says, unless there be reeds stuck in the ground, to point out the line of direction, the way could not be found, because the wind blows up the sand and covers the footsteps.

The morning was delightful, on our setting out; and promised us a fine day; but the light air from the south had increased to a gale. The sun became obscure; and getting every hour into a looser sand, it flew around us in such whirlwinds, with the sudden gusts that blew, that it was impossible to proceed. We halted, therefore, for an hour, and sheltered ourselves under the lee of our camels, who were themselves so terrified as to need fastening by the knees, and uttered, in their moanings, but a melancholy symphony.

I know not whether it was the novelty of the situation that gave it additional horror, or whether the habit of magnifying evils to which we are unaccustomed had increased its effect; but certain it is, that fifty gales of wind at sea appeared to me more easy to be encountered than one among those sands. It is impossible to imagine desolation more complete. We could see neither earth, nor sun, nor sky. The plain at ten paces distant was absolutely imperceptible: our animals, as well as ourselves, were so covered with the sand as to render

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