On the Arabian Frontier of Effypt. 227 



success of the canal enterprise of Darius and Ptolemy, it 

 would be a very unusual coincidence of error to find such dis- 

 tinct evidences of the time and place of this operation, com- 

 bined with such proofs of its necessity as the structure of the 

 land displays, if, after all, these monarchs had not executed 

 the works this theory attributes to them. 



Since the partial restoi'ation of the river under Ptolemy 

 and Trajan, it has always been regarded as a canal — a work 

 of art — a decayed monument of national enterprise, illustrat- 

 ing the triumph of human perseverance over the most foi*- 

 niidable natural difficulties, and whose origin is lost in the 

 gloom of fabulous antiquity. After the canal fell into ruins 

 from disuse and neglect, the summary process of turning the 

 course of the waters another way, by the dykes of Tel el 

 Jehud,* was resorted to ; and the manner in which the river 

 remains suppressed to this day, so effectually, that its former 

 existence is not even suspected, is thus too obvious to require 

 further explanation. The flood of 1800 threw the valley 

 out of cultivation for two years. No wonder, then, that it 

 should be more expedient to keep the water low by means of 

 dykes, and to exclude it altogether from the valley, than to 

 let it take its natural course. To restore the entire canal, 

 so that the waters could be conducted safely through it, as 

 in ancient times, is a work which the recent condition of 

 Egyptian affairs has offered as yet no motive for attempting. 

 Mohammed Ali has replaced a piece of Necho's canal, up to 

 near Abbasieh, but only for irrigation. The supply of water 

 can never surpass the low level to which the canal Abou- 

 Menedgy, from which it is drawn, is itself artificially kept 

 down near Shibbeen ; unless, by design or accident, the dykes 

 that confine its waters should be removed, and present again 

 the unexpected, but perfectly. natural, phenomena of 1800, 

 by which so startling and convincing a proof was afforded to 

 confirm my conclusion, that an arm of tlie Nile, which, in 

 the remotest ages of historical antiquity, was the natural 

 frontier fortification of Arabian Egypt, has been sacrificed to 

 the exigencies of man ; that it has been removed out of its 



* Vide uiite, p. 38. ami I'lalc? V., .section '2. 



