196 John Hogg, Esq., on the Geography and 
and pools of sea-water are left stagnant. The soil there is 
a fine sand rendered solid by the action of the waves. In 
some parts it is covered with a saline crust, exhibiting strips 
here and there quite white with shells. The marshy land on 
the north and north-west is soft, wherein the camels sink : 
this is called, as Burckhardt says, like all salt-marshes, 
“ Szabegha,” and it is below the level of the sea. The broad 
tract of sand dividing these marshes from the gulf is about a 
yard higher than that level. The banks of the great canal 
of Ptolemy are visible, and may be traced for some distance 
northwards, and the bed of it resembles “a low and narrow 
Wadi,” that is to say, a valley or bed of a river. 
According to M. de Laborde, the levels taken through the 
country, between Suez and Tineh, near Pelusium, gave a 
depth of 24 feet below the levels of the Mediterranean and the 
Red Seas. 
On rising ground, a little beyond the head of the Gulf, 
Arsinoe or Cleopatris* is, I believe, correctly placed. At this 
day several mounds would seem to fix the former position ; 
but I am not aware that any travellers have yet made any 
excavations there, or in the conjectured site of Clysma. The 
gulf to the north of Suez, Dr Robinson says, ‘‘ was anciently 
not much wider at its entrance than at present, while further 
north it spread itself out into a broader and deeper bay.” t 
From the extremity of the gulf, in a north-eastern direc- 
tion, the ideal boundary line of Africa and Asia is laid down. 
Passing to the south, along the west coast of the Peninsula, 
opposite to Suez, beds of marine deposits, with low hills of 
sand and gravel, prevail; the latter, indeed, continue to the 
north-east and east for a great distance, thence southwards 
a gravelly desert plain succeeds. 
Gebel-el-Rahah on the east extends parallel to the sea; 
this is a long range of mountains, forming “‘ an ascent to the 
high plateau of the vast interior desert.” About two-thirds _ 
of this range and of the wilderness of Etham, consist of a 
* See as to the canal and this town, Strabo, Geograph. lib. 17, 20, p. 1140, 
Bdit. Falconer, tom, ii, Oxon, 1807; also Pliny, Nat. Hist., lib. vi., cap. 29. 
+ Biblical Researches, vol. i., p- 88. 
