34 On the Arabian Frontier of Er/ypt. 



guous to the cities that lay all along it ; besides causing gi'eat 

 inconvenience, by the stoppage of all the roads.* 



The causes of this river's disappearance, as well as the 

 era and purpose of such an undertaking, are thus revealed, 

 simply by the make of the land. Necho did not construct his 

 canal because there was not water enough in the valley for 

 navigation and irrigation, but because there was too much ! 

 His object was, on the one hand, to keep up the communi- 

 cation so impoi'tant to commerce, by means of a water-course, 

 and which, under proper restraint, might fertilize the soil 

 without swamping it; and yet, on the other hand, to reclaim 

 and bring into cultivation a large ti'act of land lying waste 

 under a mass of equally waste and useless waters. 



It is quite clear that such a purpose could not be carried 

 into effect without beginning by draining the valley. The 

 opei'ations of cutting a canal and building up embankments, 

 cannot be carried on in a place which every annual inunda- 

 tion converted into a lake from 12 to 20 feet deep (exclu- 

 sive of the central channel of the river), for that must have 

 been the amount of the rise in the valley in Necho' s time. 

 No one but he who intended to replace the river by such a 

 canal as Necho constructed, would do such a thing as to cut 

 off the only possible supply of water from a chain of the most 

 important frontier cities of Egypt, extending from Etiiam to 

 MiGDOL. It is, therefore, not unreasonable to ascribe to 

 Necho the excision of this part of the Etham channel. For 

 it is an inference necessarily arising out of certain facts — the 

 physical fact of the construction of the land, that reveals the 

 expediency of the undertaking — coupled with the historically 

 recorded fact, that Necho made this part of the canal. The 

 conclusion that he cut off the corresponding part of the river, 

 requires no other proof tlian is afforded by those facts. 



A strong embankment thrown across the Etham branch 

 at its point of junction with the Pelusiac, would effect this, by 



*■ Mem. siir le Canal ties deux Mers. Lcpere ; Et Mod., vol. xi., p. 83. During 

 the accidental irruption of the waters in 1800, the entire valley, from Abba- 

 sieh to Ras el Wady, had the apj)earance of a sea — the palm trees near Abba- 

 sieh were so immersed in water, that only tlie tops of their leaves were visible. 



