134. 
DESCRIPTIONS OF EGYPT. 
ments ; many of them are concealed by the ac- 
cumulation of sand and mud, and others are 
destroyed by the superstition of the inhabitants. 
From the mouth of the Nile to Cape Brulos, or 
Berelos, the extreme point of the Delta, the soil 
is sandy and barren, and it preserves the same 
character in that low and narrow ridge which 
separates the lake Butos, or Brulos, from the sea. 
This extensive lake, near the extremity of the 
Delta, enclosed within the main land by a long 
narrow ridge of sand, marks the imperfect con- 
solidation of that alluvial district. Between this 
lake and the Canopic branch of the Nile, the Mi- 
lesian wall w^as drawn by the Ionian Greeks who 
had been permitted to settle at Naucratis. In 
the city of Butos was an oracle of Latona,* in a 
temple remarkable for its magnificence. The 
shrine, composed of one enormous mass of granite, 
about sixty feet square, was hewn in a quarry in 
the island Philie, near the cataracts of the Nile, 
and brought down the river on rafts, to the dis- 
tance of two hundred leagues. This work of im- 
mense labour is characteristic of the genius of 
the men w^ho built the pyramids. In the time 
of Herodotus, the great Butos" stood upon the 
Sebennitic branch of the Nile. This branch 
seems either to have varied its course, or to have 
* Strabo. Casaubon. p. 1154. 
