Before Chrift, about 280. 85 



breadth, and had fufVicient depth for what were then efteemed large 

 veflels. There was a lock conftruded upon it, which, the antient writ- 

 ers fay, was intended to prevent tlic fait water of the Red fea from 

 fpoiling the water of the river, or to prevent the Red fea from over- 

 flowing the land, which, they ftrangely thought, was lower than the 

 furface of that fea *. [S/raio, L. xvii, p. 1156 — FUn. L. vi, c. 29.] 



In. this infant Hate of the trade of Egypt, Heroopolis at the head of 

 the weftern branch of the Red fea was the port from which veflels fail- 

 ed, and Sabsea was the country to which they went to procure frank- 

 incenfe, myrh, cafia, cinnamon, &c. \ftheophraJli Hiji. plant. L. ix, c. 4.] 



Owing to the dangerous and difficult navigation of the Red fea, or to 

 feme other caufes unknown to us, the canal, the work of fo many ages, 

 was found not fo ufeful or advantageous as was expedled. Ptolemy 

 therefor founded a town called Berenice, about 300 miles lower on the 

 Red fea, to which the flaple of the eaflern trade was removed. The 

 Egyptian, or, to fpeak more corre6lly, the Grecian, merchants, failed 

 from Berenice down the Red fea, near the mouth of which, in the 

 country of the Sabaeans, there were feveral good trading ports, and par- 

 ticularly that called Arabia Felix, about 120 miles beyond the Straits, 

 where they found a general aflbrtment of the fpices, aromatics, and 

 other productions, of Arabia and Ethiopia, and alfo thofe of India, 

 which the long experience of the Sabaeans in the nature of the periodi- 

 cal winds called monfoons, of the feas, and of the various ports of In- 

 dia, enabled them to furnifli to the merchants of Egypt cheaper than 

 they could have procured them themfelves, if they had coafted the 

 whole way to India in their own fmall veffels f. On their return they 



* The obvioH3 reafon was to preferve the water Sabasa, as jufl noticed. — No Indian voyages from 

 upon a level at the lower end of the canal, and to Egypt are mentioned by Agatharchides when de- 

 let the veflels down to, or raife them up from, the fcribing the oriental commerce abont 170 years 

 ica. I (iO not, however, mean to fay, that the after the ellabliniment of the Ptolemies! n Egypt. — 

 head of the Red fea, which has a tidt, may not And Strabo, befides relating the ftory of a voyage 

 be highct at high nvater than the Mediterranean, from Egypt to India by Eudoxus, [Z,. ii, />. 155] 

 which never rifes more than nine or ten inches which, whether true or falfe, clearly proves that 

 above its ufual level. But the canal was drawn the Greeks of Egypt had not then attempted any 

 off from the rivers/ the head of the Delia, where voyages to India, fays, [L. xvii, p. 1 149] that 

 its water was probably 30 or 40 feet above the the trade of Egypt with India and the country of 

 level of the Mediterranean. Indeed the country the Troglodytes was nczv in his own time. — It is 

 mull have been very near level, if, allowing for a true that Pliny [L. vi, f. 23] cxpreffes his intcn- 

 very gentle declivity from the head to the mouth tion of defcribing the paflage of Alexander's fleet 

 of the canal, a fingle lock was fufficient to flrift from the Indus to the head of the Perfian gulf, 

 the veflels out of, or into, the fea.— Quere, if this ' and afterwards that navigation, which, being dif- 

 was the firll lock ever conflrufted upon a canal ? ♦ covered at that time, is kept up to this day.' 



\ It has lately been fuppofed, that voyages But it is not too prefumptuous to fay, that tiie 



were made dircft from Egypt to India from the authority of Pliny, who wrote from the works or 



commencement of the Macedonian dominion in reports of others, and was particularly defciilive in 



Egypt ; but there does not appear to be any fuf- oriental aflaiis, if it were even exprefs and pointed, 



ficient foundation for fuch a fuppofition. Theo~ as it is not, ouglit not to be fet againil the afler- 



phraftus, an author contemporary with Alexander tion, or even the fdence, of Theophrallus, Aga- 



and the full of the Ptolemie.-, has not a word of tharchides, or Strabo, who wrote from their own 



voyages to India, though he mentions voyages to perfona! knowlege. The 



