34 DELTA AND ALLUVIAL PLAIN OF THE NILE. CHAP. in. 



out of his treasury, and his successor, after his death, con 

 tinued the operations with the same princely liberality. 



Several engineers and a body of sixty workmen were 

 employed under the superintendence of Hekekyan Bey, men 

 inured to the climate, and able to carry on the sinking of 

 shafts and borings during the hot months, after the waters 

 of the Nile had subsided, and in a season which would have 

 been fatal to Europeans. 



The results of chief importance arising out of this enquiry 

 were obtained from two sets of shafts and borings sunk at 

 intervals in lines crossing the great valley from east to west. 

 One of these consisted of no less than fifty-one pits and 

 artesian perforations, made where the valley is sixteen miles 

 wide from side to side between the Arabian and Lybian 

 deserts, in the latitude of Heliopolis, about eight miles above 

 the apex of the delta. The other line of borings and pits, 

 twenty-seven in number, was in the parallel of Memphis, 

 where the valley is only five miles broad. 



Everywhere in these sections the sediment passed through 

 was similar in composition to the ordinary Nile mud of the 

 present day, except near the margin of the valley, where thin 

 layers of quartzose sand, such as is sometimes blown from the 

 adjacent desert by violent winds, was observed to alternate 

 with the loam. 



A remarkable absence of lamination and stratification was 

 observed almost universally in the sediment brought up from 

 all points except where the sandy layers above alluded to oc 

 curred, the mud agreeing closely in character with the ancient 

 loam of the Ehine, called loess. Mr. Horner attributes this 

 want of all indication of successive deposition to the ex 

 treme thinness of the film of matter which is thrown down 

 annually on the great alluvial plain during the season of in 

 undation. The tenuity of this layer must indeed be extreme, 

 if the French engineers are tolerably correct in their estimate 



