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with silifious pebbles iiinl ii few very stuut.ed busliy plants. These hills slope 

 down to the sandy valley, the lowest point of which is seventy to eighty feet 

 below the level of the sea at Alexandria. In this valley there are about 

 eight lakes lying in a line from one end of the Wady to the other. 

 Beyond their edges, ami extending some distance into the desert from them, is 

 a thick growth of very tall reeds, called by the natives ' bourdi,' which is largely 

 used as fuel by the Egyptian Salt & Soda Company in their manufactory here. 



Zaghig and Lakes. 



During the last few years the 'bourdi' has been much reduced. All the lakes 

 are salt (though the most northerly one. Lake Gar, is less so than the others), 

 containing in solution varying quantities of chloride and carbonate of soda, and 

 sometimes some sodium snlpliate. The sand for some distance round the lakes, 

 and even as far south as Der Macarins, is covered with a thick outgrowth of salt. 

 The lakes dry up in the summer, some of them becoming completely dry, while others 

 remain as moist, though hardly wet, marshes. The large deiiosits of salt, both that 

 fdrmud by the outgrowth on the sand and that deposited by the receding lakes, 

 are dug out and carried on trolleys to the soda factor}- at Bir Hooker, where the 



