232 On the Arabian Frontier of Egypt. 



" utterly destroy ;" or whether we adopt the more critically 

 correct expression, as restored by the learned Bishop Lowth, 

 Jinnn I'endered, in his beautiful translation, " smite with a 

 drought" — the fact is before us — in an arm of the sea 35 

 miles long, changed into a waste of sand and saline marsh, 

 and remaining, to this day, a speaking and instructive in- 

 stance of the literally accomplished doom,, pronounced on the 

 land by the inspired voice of Prophecy, in the days of her glory 

 and pride. 



The Buhis, or Edeeyah of Fernando To. By Thomas R. 

 HeyW'OOD Thomson, M.D. Communicated to the Edin- 

 burgh New Philosophical Journal by the Ethnological So- 

 ciety of London.* 



Of the different localities in Western Africa, visited by 

 the Niger Expedition in 1841 and 1842, perhaps no one pre- 

 sented a greater number of new and interesting features to 

 the inquirer than the island of Fernando Po, in the Bight of 

 Biafra. Lying between 3^ 12' and 3' 67', noi-th latitude, and 

 8° 46' and 8° 57' east longitude, it forms, towards the southern 

 extremity, an oblong square, about 35 miles in length, and 22 

 in breadth. The land is high, and in many parts precipitous. 

 Two principal mountain ranges intersect the island in a north- 

 east direction, of which Clarence Peak, i-ising to a height of 



by sgJiWCs/, " make dry, barren, or desolate," as in all other passages which it 

 occurs ; moreover the expression " drying up the sea" is frequent in prophetic 

 poetry, whether intended to be taken figuratively or literally. 



This conformity between the two most ancient versions leaves scarcely a 

 doubt that the original reading was, " And Jehovah will dnj up the tongue 

 of the Egyptian Sea." Although the separation of the gulf-basin dates from 

 the last century of the Persian domination in Egypt, and upwards of three cen- 

 turies after Isaiah wrote the above, " the tongue of the Egyptian Sea" was not 

 " dried up" until the power of Egypt had reached its lowest stage of decadence 

 under the Moslem rule, when the canal was left to fall into ruins, and its 

 waters were turned off another way. 



And that very shoal, which once was made " an highway for Israel, when he 

 ascended out of Egypt," has become a permanent highway for the peojjle. The 

 Mecca pilgrims' caravan route from Caix-o, through the desert, crosses it a little 

 north of Arsinoe. 



* i?ead before the Ethnological Society of London, 8th Dec. 1817, 



