216 On the Arabian Frontier of Egypt. 



with the Port Daneon of Pliny — a more modern name of 

 Baal-zepiion. Nothing can be clearer, thus far, than this 

 statement; and nothing easier than to verify its accuracy by 

 actual measurement, since the ruins of the canal are still visi- 

 ble. It is 62 miles long, — it is finished up to the sea, — and 

 that is the distance from the Nile to the sea. 



Yet, Pliny thus continues : — " Sesostris, King of Egypt, 

 first conceived this undertaking ; afterwards Darius of Persia, 

 after him, Ptolemy II., who dug a canal to the bitter springs, 

 100 feet wide, 30 deep, and 37,500 paces (37^ Rom. miles) 

 long. He did not finish the work for fear of inundating the 

 country, the Red Sea being found at that place three cubits 

 higher than the lands of Egypt. 



In what place ? most unquestionably near the sea, wherever 

 that might be. But Pliny seems here to contradict himself 

 in a most extraordinary manner. He appears to forget hav- 

 ing just told us that a canal of a certain length was finished 

 up to the sea, since what immediately follows that very ex- 

 plicit statement, is another equally explicit statement that 

 it was not ! 



The only hypothesis by which this contradiction can be 

 resolved, from the unqualified absurdity that it appears, into 

 the accurate representation of the state of things in Ptolemy's 

 time that it really was, — is this : that a little before the reign 

 of Ptolemy, a new head of the Red Sea had been formed near 

 Suez, (vide section 1, 4), but that the ancient head, now vir- 

 tually become an inland sea 20 geographical miles in length, 

 still retained its former name ; that this accident of nature 

 had rendered necessary certain additional works, amounting 

 to 37i M.P., to extend the line of navigation up to the new 

 maritime station, Arsinoe, built (according to the same ac- 

 count) by Ptolemy, on the " Gulf of Charandra :" that, in 

 the first paragraph, Pliny alluded to the former head of the 

 gulf; and, in the second, to its present one. 



When we consider that the surface of the great shoal 

 north of Suez must have been rising so slowly and insensibly, 

 by the submarine accumulations of centuries, that no one 

 perhaps had particularly remarked the exact period when a 

 sand bank, which for more than 300 yeai's had so far impeded 



