220 Sir J. (jafdiier Wilkinson on the Nile, and 



work,* " though many have spoken of the encroachments <rf' 

 the sand upon the cultiA'able soil, it appears to me much less 

 considerable than is supposed ; for otherwise many places in- 

 dicated by ancient writers to have been on the borders of the 

 desert would now be distant from the irrigated land, and the 

 canal of Joseph, after so many ages of bad government, would 

 have been long since filled up." In some places, he adds, this 

 has happened, as at Werdan, in the province of Gizeh, where 

 the sand has advanced to the distance of a league ; but the 

 position of the place, at the outlet of a gorge in the Libyan 

 mountains, is perhaps partly the cause of this, an opinion 

 which perfectly coincides with my own observation. In many 

 places, where valleys open vipon the plain, the sand is found 

 to accumulate, and sometimes to form drifts upon the land, 

 which, when no precautions are taken, by planting the bushy 

 tamarisk, increase so far as to prevent the overflow of the 

 Nile from covering a portion of the previously irrigated soil ; 

 but these incursions of sand are only partial and in particular 

 spots, bearing a very small proportion to the whole valley of 

 Egypt ; and it must be remembered that the desert, or gra- 

 dual slope of the Hajer, between the limestone range and the 

 arable land, is not a plain of moving sand, as some have 

 imagined, but is composed of clay and stony groimd, mixed 

 with a proportion of sand, or an old detritus of the neighbour- 

 ing rocks. On the eastern side of the valley very few sand- 

 di'ifts are met with, except those seen from Cairo, beyond 

 Heliopolis, and the Birket el Hajj on the Suez road, but these 

 ' do not encroach upon the arable land, from which they are far 

 distant ; and since I have shewn that on the western or 

 Libyan side also the places where sand encumbers the land 

 are partial, it may be readily imagined how slight an effect 

 they must have, compared with the whole extent of the 

 country. 



In the Delta, the only sandy places of consequence are here 

 and there on the Libyan shore, and on the coast of the Medi- 

 terranean, bearing an imperceptible proportion to the whole 

 superficies of that province ; and, indeed, the sand on the coast 



'^ - , , 



* Memoires sur I'Egypte, vol. iv. p. 6, 



