356 PASSAGE OF THE CHILDREN OF ISRAEL 
The French engineers discovered, when in possession of Suez, 
that at a little distance to the north of that place are marshes which 
extend for above twenty-five miles, and are actually lower than 
the sea, though they are not overflowed, in consequence of a large 
bar of sand which has accumulated between them ; nothing there- 
fore can be more probable, than that, in times so far back as the 
departure of the Israelites, the sea itself extended to these marshes ; 
and that since, the same gradual incroachments of sand from the 
Desert, which have formed the Tehama in Lower Arabia, have 
annihilated the sea in a place where it was so much narrower. The 
contradictions may be still farther removed by the supposition, that 
Strabo considered himself as justified in describing a place as being 
on the Gulf, which was actually situated on the canal that united 
* it with the Nile, and which, from being of the greatest consequence 
in the province, gave its name to it. 
Were we, however, inclined to give every weight to the de- 
scription of Strabo, his evidence would be set aside by the higher 
authority of Moses, who proves that Goshen was in the way to 
Canaan ; and by the short account of Ptolemy, who declares that 
Heroopolis was on the confines of Arabia, and that the canal of 
Trajan ran through it (p. 120). The course of this canal has been 
traced by the French engineers, from longitude 31° 52' to 32,° 2,0' 
running in nearly an east and west direction, in about 30° 32,' north 
latitude. 
It is therefore within this line only, that we can look for it ; and 
I am inclined to admit the opinion of Monsieur Ayme as well 
founded, that the ruins he discovered at Aboukechied, indicate 
the spot where Heroopolis stood, and where, consequently, the 
