on the Persian Gulf, and on Babel and Babylon. 67 



I am desirous of adding a few references and observations 

 which have since occurred to me. 



With respect to the changes which have taken place in the 

 courseof the Euphrates, the authority of the Nubian geographer, 

 Ebn Idrisi, is important. This writer, after showing that one 

 branch of the Euphrates joined the Tigris, by which vessels 

 were brought down from Samosata to Bagdad, says that the 

 other branch, skirting the desert, divided itself into several 

 arms, of which one passed Tsarsar, another Alcatur, a third 

 Sura, and a fourth Kufa, and that all these arms terminated in 

 the lakes*, which lakes, as described in my former papers, will 

 have been formed, to the destruction of the course of the river, 

 by the same process of change which has also subsequently 

 annihilated them. 



This change, as I have before stated, consists as well in an 

 alteration of the courses of the rivers as in an advance of the 

 land at the head of the gulf. And as upon this latter point 

 Mr. Carter regards the express statement of Pliny as a mere 

 " notion," adding that " certainly serious doubts may well 

 arise of the authenticity of the passage" in which it occursf, I 

 am glad to be able to refer to so valuable an authority as that 

 of the Rev. G. C. Renouard, who, tar from doubting the au- 

 thenticity of the passage or regarding the fact recorded in it 

 as a notion of the writer, says : " Nor can any doubt be en- 

 tertained as to the co?Uinual augmentation and change of this 

 coast, when we learn from Pliny (vi. 31) that Charax, at first 

 a maritime town, only 10 stadia (1| mile) from the sea, was 

 distant 50 miles from it according to Juba, and as much as 

 120 miles in his own time, (in the first century of our era,) 

 as he had heard from persons well-acquainted with the place. X* 



* " Euphrates labitur deinde a Samosat, atque illinc ferre incipit naves 

 usque ad Baghdad. A Samosat postea excurrit per meridiem declinans ad 

 orientem...ad Hitz, ad Enbar ; indeque defluit adamnem Isa, ad Baghdad. 

 Jacet autein Baghdad secus Tigrim. Reliqua vero pars Euphratis fluens a 

 Rahaba, e tergo deserti, in varia dividitur brachia, quorum unum pergit ad 

 Tsarsar, aliud ad Alcatur, aliud etiam ad Sura, quartum denique ad Kufam, 

 et omnia ilia brachia varios in lacus sese immergunt.'' p. v. dim. iv. cited 

 in Base's Regnum Davidis, p. 154. 



f See Lond. and Edinb. Phil. Mag., vol. vii. p. 197- 



X EncycL Metrop. 4th div. vol. x. p. 256. I must not, however, omit to 

 cite on the opposite side of the question the authority of a writer of no 

 little renown, namely, Professor Heeren, who, in a treatise on the former 

 shape of the Persian Gulf, after making the voyage of Nearchus to cor- 

 respond with the present eastern coastof that »ulf,by using a stadium of eight 

 to the mile,— not less closely (it is worthy of remark) than Dr. Vincent has 

 done by employing a stadium of just half the length,- gives it as his opinion, 

 that the northern coast, in the time of Nearchus, probably excended much 

 further to the south than it does in the present dav ! His words are, 



K<2 



