i 9 6 TRAVELS TO DTSC6VER 



When the ancient race of the Ptolemies ended, a fcene 

 of war and confufion, and bad government at home, was 

 fucceeded by a worfe under foreigners abroad. The num- 

 ber of its inhabitants was Mill greatly decreafed, and the val- 

 ley I* ad yet a quantity of water enough to fit it for annual 

 culture. 



In the reign of the fecond emperor after the Roman con- 

 queft, Petronius Arbiter, a man well known for taite and 

 learning, was governor of Egypt. He faw with regret the 

 decay of the magnificent works of the ancient native 

 Egyptian princes. His fagacity penetrated the ufefulnefs 

 and propriety of thofe works. He faw they had once made 

 Egypt populous and flounihing. Like a good citizen and 

 fubject of the ftate he ferved, and from a humane and ra- 

 tional attachment to that which he governed, he hoped to 

 v make it again as ilouriming under the new government as it 

 had been under the old. Like a man of fenfe, and mailer of 

 his fubject, he laughed at the datlardly fpirit of the modern 

 Egyptians, anxious and trembling left the Nile fhould not 

 overflow land enough to give them bread, when they had 

 the power in their hands to procure plenty in abundance for 

 fix times the number of the people then in Egypt. To fhew 

 them this, he repaired their ancient works, raifed their banks, 

 refitted their fluices, and by thus imprifoning, as I may fay, 

 the inundation at a proper time in the beginning, he over- 

 flowed all Egypt with S peeks of water, as fully, and as ef- 

 fectually, as to the purpofes of agriculture, as before and 

 fince it hath been with i 6 ; and did not open the fluices to 

 allow the water to run and wafle in the defert (where there 

 was now no longer any inhabitants), till the land of the 

 valley of Egypt had been fo well watered as only to need 

 i that 



