DESCRIPTIONS OF EGYPT. 
127 
long as the Canopic branch continued navigable. 
In the fifteenth century, when the naturalist Belon 
travelled in Egypt, it was inferior only to Cairo ; 
but it now yields to Rosetta, both in size and po- 
pulation. On the western bank of this branch 
are situated Deirut, Rahmany, and Terane. 
The district on the west of the Canopic branch 
of the Nile, partakes of the character of the Libyan 
desert, and is inferior in fertility to the Delta. 
The soil is more parched and sandy, and the fields 
of beautiful vegetation, covered with the blossoms 
of the bean and cotton plant, gradually mingle 
with the sands of the desert. Receding from the 
Nile, the regions of sand and rock, entirely devoid 
of vegetable earth, commence, and the ground 
rises, by an easy ascent, first into acclivities, then 
into hills, and at last terminates in mountains. A 
stratum of fine moving sand, in which animals sink 
as they pass over it, first appears, which consoli- 
dates as the ground ascends, and is interspersed 
with agates and pebbles of jasper, till the sand en- 
tirely disappears, and the plains of loose shivery 
stones occupy the summits of the hills. In these 
plains are various spots covered with verifiable stones 
of a reddish grey colour, strongly fixed in the 
ground, with their sharp points projecting above 
its surface. Between the interstices of the stony 
strata, and in the less elevated situations between 
the hills, where the sand is not so much attenuated 
