696 TRAVELS TO DISCOVER | 
~Wuen 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 ftill greatly decreafed, and the val- 
ley had yeta quantity of water none to fit it for annual 
culture. -f) 
In the reign of the fecond emperor after the Roman con- 
queft, Perronius Arbiter, a man well known for tafte 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 os.thofe works. He faw they had once made 
Egypt populous and flourifhing. Like a good citizen and 
fubject of the flate he ferved, and from a humane and ra- 
tional attachment to that which he governed, ‘he hoped to 
make it again as flonrifhing under the new government as it 
hhad been under the old. Like aman of fenfe, and mafter of 
his fubject, he laughed at the daftardly 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 8 peeks of water, as fully, and as ef- 
fectually, as to the purpofes of agriculture, as before and 
fince it hath been with 163 and did not open the fluices to 
allow the water to run and wafte in the defert (where there 
was now no longer any inhabitants), till the land of the 
walley of Egypt had been fo well watered as only to need 
I that 
