On the Arabian Frontier of Egypt. 221 



the large basin in question never can have fonned more than 

 one lake after its separation from the main. The form of the 

 ground, in the section 1, places this point beyond dispute. 



Secondly, So small a body of fi-esh water as any artificial 

 canal, (even if it had run freely into the lake, which this par- 

 ticular canal did not), never could pour into it a sufficient 

 quantity to sweeten the contents of such a basin of sea- water 

 as this, full 20 miles long, averaging 5 in breadth, and 60 

 feet deep in the middle. The canal could only restore to its 

 own level, whatever water the lake lost by evaporation. But 

 as salt does not evaporate, the lake would always remain as 

 salt as before, unless it had an outlet, by another canal, into 

 a sea lower than either the canal or the lake ; then, there 

 being a current through it, the salt water might gradually 

 be replaced by fresh. 



Thirdly, But in the time of Strabo, no such canal existed. 

 It went no farther than Arsinoe. Its final junction with the 

 present Gulf of Suez, across the remainder of the newly 

 formed barrier, was not effected till a century after Strabo 

 wrote, by the Roman Emperors Trajan and Hadrian.* Al- 

 though earlier authors than Pliny speak of the canal as be- 

 ing finished by Ptolemy Philadelphus, it is obvious that they 

 only spoke from report, and confound the//-A'^ termination of 

 the canal with the second; the author of the one with that of 

 the other ;t but that the account given by Pliny is the true 

 representation of the state of things in his own time ; he takes 

 up the matter where Herodotus broke off", and therefore, as 

 the last contemporaneous authority, whose testimony has 

 stood the ordeal of minute analysis, he is the most to be 



* Trajan's canal completed the restoration of the southern part of the Etham 

 branch as a water-course. Beyond Scena; to Heliopolis, it followed a de- 

 serted course of the Pelusiac, deflected from its former position to the present 

 site of canal Abou-Menedgy, by the action of the same causes that have thrown 

 the f 'anopic into the Sebennytic branch. From Heliopolis to Babylon, the rest of 

 Trajan's canal, which is now the canal of Cairo, was an entirely artificial cut- 

 ting, — its object, to raise the level of the water to that of the sea at Clysma, 

 where it ended. Hence Claudius Ptolemy, the geographer (B. iv., c. 5.), says 

 of it, that it flowed through Babylon and Ueroopolis. {Vidt Plate VI.) 



t Vidt Note to page 219. 



