114 THE ANCIENT EGYPTIANS. CHAP. XI. 



tlie irrigated land, and the canal of Joseph, after so 

 many ages of bad government, would have been long 

 since filled up." In some places, he adds, this has 

 happened, as at Werdan in the province of Geezeh, 

 where the sand has advanced to the distance of a 

 league ; but the position of the place, — at the outlet 

 of a gorge in the Libyan Mountains, — is perhaps 

 partly the cause of this : an opinion which per- 

 fectly coincides with my own observations. In 

 many places where valleys open upon the ])lain, the 

 sand is found to accumulate, and sometimes to form 

 drifts upon the land, which, when no precautions 

 are taken, by planting the bushy tamarisk, increase 

 so fiir as to prevent the overflow of the Nile from 

 covering a portion of the previously irrigated soil ; 

 but these incursions of sand are only partial, and 

 in particular spots, bearing a very small proportion 

 to the whole valley of Egypt ; and it must be re- 

 membered that the desert, or gradual slope of the 

 hdgeri between the limestone range and the arable 

 land, is not a plain of moving sand, as some have 

 imagined, but is composed of clay and stony ground 

 mixed with a proportion of sand, or an old detritus 

 of the neighbouring rocks. On the eastern side of 

 the valley, very few sand drifts are to be met with, 

 except those seen from Cairo, beyond Heliopolis 

 and the Birket el Hag, or the Suez road : but these 

 do not encroach upon the arable land, from which 

 they are far distant : and since I have shown that 

 on the W., or Libyan, side also, the places where 

 sand encumbers the valley are partial, it may be 

 readily imagined how slight an effect these must 



