TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION E. 1127 
7. Notes on recent Mountaineering in the Himalaya. 
tu By Dovetas W. FResHFIELD, F.R.G.S. 
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 12. 
The Section did not meet. 
MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 14, 
The following Papers and Reports were read :— 
1. Projected Restoration of the Reian Meris, and the Province, Lake, and 
Canals ascribed to the Patriarch Joseph. By Corr Wurrrnovse, M.A. 
The Berlin Geographical Society has published, in its Zeitschrift for May 1885 
(No, 116), the latest map of Egypt, from the Fayoum to Behnesa, and from the 
Nile to the Little Oasis. The text by Dr. Ascherson gives credit fora considerable 
area to the topographical observations presented to this society at Montreal. So 
much of the Reian basin as lies between the Qasr Qeritin and the Qasr Reian has 
not been visited by any European except the author of this paper (1882, 1885). It 
is now an accepted fact that there is a depression south of the Fayoum, not less 
than 150 feet below the level of the Mediterranean, with a superficial area at the 
level of high Nile of several hundred square miles. It is irregular in shape, 
curving like a horn from a point near Behnesa to the ridge which separates it from 
the Fayoum. In the southern part are two, and perhaps three, patches of vege- 
tation, wild palm-trees, and ruins of Roman and early Christian date, This part 
was visited by Belzoni, May 22, 1819; Calliaud, November 24, 1819; Pacho and 
Miiller, 1823-24; Sir G. Wilkinson, 1825; Mason Bey, 18703 and Ascherson, 
March 27, 1876. Dr. Ascherson determined by aneroid observations that his camp 
was 29 metres below the sea. Calliaud found ruins about +38m., or about the 
level of high Nile in the valley on the same latitude. The aneroid, theodolite,and 
other observations of March 6 and April 4, 1882, and April 1883, by the author of 
this paper, established a depth of —175to —180 English feet. The greatest depth is 
probably under the western cliffs south of the Haram Medhiret el-Berl. No pre- 
vious explorer had conceived it possible that this might have been a lake within 
historic times. The level of the ruins, as determined by Calliaud, shows that the 
ancient station of Ptolemais might have been, as represented in the text and maps 
of Claudius Ptolemy, on a horn-shaped lake about thirty-five miles long and fifteen 
wide, with a maximum depth of 300 feet, fed by a canal, partly subterranean, from 
Behnesa, as well as by a branch of the present Bahr Jisuf communicating with it 
through the Fayoum. The lower plain of the Fayoum had been, at that time, 
fully redeemed, and the present Lake of the Horn reduced to such insignificant 
dimensions as to be unnoticed. The restoration of the Reian basin of Lake Meeris 
and the drainage by evaporation of the Birket el-Qeriin would be a repetition in 
modern times of the best results reached in the Greco-Roman period, perhaps 
3,000 years after the first effort to utilise these two unique basins for storage and 
drainage. 
The feasibility of the scheme is partly based upon the Mohammedan traditions 
in regard to the original redemption of the Fayoum, the construction of the existing 
canals, and the reservoir of water which formerly filled the Wadi Reian. It had 
been stated by Sir G. Wilkinson that the Bahr Jisuf, or Canal of Joseph, owed its 
name. to a restoration under Saladin (ca, a.p, 1166), Masudi (born, Bagdad, 
