THE SURFACE OF THE GLOBE. 79 



reduce this gulf to the form of a lake six leagues long. It is still even 

 true, that since that period things have undergone a still greater 

 change. The sands thrown up by the sea and the wind have formed 

 between the isle of Pharos and the ancient city a tongue of land of 

 two hundred fathoms in breadth, on which the modern city has been 

 built. It has blocked up the nearest mouth of the Nile, and dimi- 

 nished the lake Mareotis to nearly nothing. During this period the 

 alluvial deposites of the Nile have been left on the banks, and very 

 much increased their extent. 



The ancients were acquainted with these alterations. Herodotus 

 gays, that the priests of Egypt looked on their country as the gift of 

 the river Nile. It is only a short time, he says, that in a manner the 

 Delta has appeared*. Aristotle observes, that Homer speaks of 

 Thebes as if it were the only city of Egypt, and makes no mention of 

 Memphis f. The Canopian and Pelusian mouths of the Nile were for- 

 merly the principal ones ; and the coast extended in a direct line from 

 one to the other ; it appears so in the charts of Ptolemy ; since his 

 time, however, the water has been cast into the Bolbitian and Phatni- 

 tic mouths ; and at these entrances the most extensive formations of 

 accumulated alluvial deposites have been made, which have given a 

 semicircular contour to the coast. The cities of Rosetta and 

 Damietta, built on the sea shores at these mouths, less than a thou- 

 sand years since, are now two leagues distant from it. According to 

 Demaillet, it would only have required twenty-six years to form a 

 cape half a league in length in front of Rosetta %. 



The height of the soil of Egypt is produced at the same time as the 

 extension of its surface, and the bottom of the bed of the river is ele- 

 vated in proportion to the adjacent plains, whence the inundation of 

 every succeeding century much exceeds the height of the marks it left 

 of its preceeding ones. .According to Herodotus, a lapse of nine 

 hundred years was enough to establish a difference in the level of 

 seven or eight cubits (ten or twelve feet)§. At Elephantia, the in- 

 undation now reaches seven feet higher than during the reign of Sep- 

 timus Severus, at the beginning of the third century. At Cairo, be- 

 fore it is deemed sufficient for the purpose of irrigating the lands, it 

 must attain a height of three feet and a half more than was requisite 

 in the ninth century. The ancient monuments of this country are all 

 more or less enveloped in the soil. The mud left by the river even 



* Herod. Euterpe, v. and xv. f Arist. Meteor, lib. i. cap. xiv. 

 + Demaillet, Descr. de l'Egypte, p. 102 and 103; 

 § Herod. Euterpe, xiii. 



