TTIR 



EDINBURGH NEW 



PHILOSOPHICAL JOURNAL. 



On the Comparative Geography af the Arabian Frontier of 

 Egypt, at the earliest epochs of Egyptian History, and at 

 the present time. (With a Map.) By Miss Fanny Corbaux. 



(Continued, from p. 42.) 



We have yet to account for the disappearance of the 

 northern half of the iitham river, for it seems to have been 

 desti'oyed piecemeal, as its partial substitute, the sea-canal, 

 was made ; and unless the suppression of this portion also 

 had been effected before the time of Herodotus, he undoubt- 

 edly would have mentioned the river among the arms of the 

 Nile he enumerates ; for Necho's canal only changed a part of 

 its course, but that work did not accomplish its final excision, 

 though it certainly was the first step towards it. Instead 

 of flowing along a natural channel from Scense to Hero, it 

 now ran along an artificial bed from Bubastis to Hero, and 

 all the rest of its course, through the Crocodile lakes towards 

 Magdolum and the sea, remained as yet unaltered. 



If our inquiry had had no other purpose in view but to 

 prove that in the lost arm of the Nile whose history we have 

 begun, a natural supply of water existed during the Mosaic 

 period, sufficiently ample to account for the existence of cities 

 in the localities suggested by Mr Sharpe as the sites of the 

 Mosaic stations, we need not have pursued the subject far- 

 ther ; for we must by this time be content as to a fact proved 

 by such unfjuestionable natural indications, that althongli 

 the suppression of this river originated in Necho's time (nine 

 centuries after Moses), it is not even now naturally extinct. 

 \oi-. ,\iiiv. NO. liX.xxvm. — APKiii 1848. u 



