On the Arabian Frontier of Egypt. 223 



But if the river ran through them, ho7V could they have 

 been bitter ? It is evident that the communication of the Nile 

 must have been cut oif, or they would always have been 

 sweet, as when after this canal was introduced. That the 

 river did flow through them has been physically proved. 

 That Strabo's lakes could be situated nowhere else, will now, 

 I hope, be readily granted. That the rivei", if cut off at all, 

 must have been cut off before the time of Herodotus, is un- 

 deniable. That the construction of the land rendered such 

 an operation expedient for the successful execution of the 

 works of Darius, has also been demonstrated. And if, after 

 the river was intercepted, and these lakes had remained in- 

 sulated some time, the canal was re-introduced into them be- 

 fore the age of Strabo, and we can find vestiges of such works 

 having been executed at the very time our theory requires, — 

 then, I hope, the chain of circumstantial evidence will be as 

 complete as can be desired, and far beyond what one could 

 have anticipated, in an endeavour to elucidate a subject so 

 obscure. For it is well known that the exudations of the 

 soil throughout this region, in which the Nile no longer flows, 

 have the property of imparting a disagreeable, bitter, and 

 acrid quality to the water that collects in its hollows by fil- 

 tration through the sandy soil. The wells now in the valley 

 partake of it more or less ; but the saline plains and marshes 

 to the north of the Crocodile lake basin, are decidedly of that 



62 M.P. being the distance from the sea to the Nile, the canal of Ptolemy, be- 

 ginning from the Nile near Bubastis, must have ended a little beyond Ras el 

 Wady, where he, accordingly, places the " bitter fountains." Now, unless we 

 entirely set aside the valuable contemporaneous testimony of Herodotus, who 

 not only has described, with a degree of circumstantial precision, which a glance 

 at the map (Plate VI.), will enable us duly to appreciate, the very place where 

 the canal was begun by Necho, and its entire course as completed by Darius to 

 the Arabian Gulf, into which it was discharged ; the hypothesis of M. Dubois- 

 Aym6 will amount to this, — that Ptolemy dug 37 miles of a canal, along a valley 

 where a canal had existed for 330 years ; — that he left off for fear of the greater 

 height of the sea, at a place that the sea had never come to within 20 miles of ; 

 — and that he then and there, and on that account, left unfinished, a work that 

 vjai finUhed up to the sea 200 years before he was born. Vide Descr. de I'Eg., 

 Kt Mod., vol. jii., and App., vol. xviii. Mem. of Dubois-Ayrae, " Sur les 

 anciennes limites de la Mer Kouge." 



