On (he Arabian Frontier uf Egypt. 217 



navigation as even to be constantly laid dry at low water,* 

 finally reached the critical point that shut out the highest 

 tides also ; there seems nothing improbable in supposing that 

 long after the event, the force of habit may have prevailed 

 over strict geographical precision of expression, in the de- 

 nomination bestowed on the upper gulf-basin, and that it 

 thus continued to be called " the Sea,'' in common parlance 

 so long as it retained a sufficiently large body of water to 

 justify an appellation it owed to long custom. And if there 

 exists no direct historial memorial of this physical change, 

 we must remember that the region, where the obstruction took 

 place was the most barren and inhospitable part of the 

 Egyptian frontier ; that, owing to the want of fresh water 

 eminently characterisic of that neighbourhood, it contained 

 no habitations but the two marine stations! recently erected, 

 merely to serve as resting points for troops, or for commer- 

 cial bands ; that it consequently was out of the reach of ob- 

 servation from all but the traders who passed by on their 

 way to the Indian Sea. Under such circumstances, it is not 

 surprising that the final crisis of a physical change so gradual 

 in its progress, should have remained unmarked and unre- 

 corded ; that the works called forth by the event being exe- 

 cuted, the next generation foi'got their immediate occasion ; 

 and that an oblique course of inferences, drawn from contem- 

 poraneous accounts too brief to admit of such explanatory 

 details, should be the only means we have of referring its 

 occurrence to a definite historical period. 



* Tlie dotted lines 2 and 3 on the shoal in section 1, Plate V. are an attempt 

 to indicate these succeBsive stages of growth from the time of Necho to that 

 of the Ptolemies. 



t The place where ruins with Persepolitan inscriptions were seen, indicated on 

 the map, but without a name, is one ; Arsinoe itself is the other. At the time 

 Arsinoe was built, tlie little inlet above Suez, which is all now remaining of 

 the Gulf Charandra, must have been a good harbour, and navigable up to that 

 port. It has since become so shallow, as to be fordable, with camels — the coast 

 line having retired so much us to be nearly two miles from Arsinoe, in ordinary 

 tides. Already in the time of the Roman emperors who completed the canal, 

 another marine ftntlon seems to have been needed. This was " Clvsma," a 

 heap now known as " Tfl Kolzini,'' a little to the north of Sue/.. 



