from the Nile to the Red Sea. 275 
plished in early times by men who were unprovided with many 
of those resources which modern art supplies. In fact, when 
the ground is explored, the supposed difficulties vanish, and we 
discover that Nature has furnished such singular and unexpect- 
ed facilities for establishing a water-communication between the 
two seas, that she has left little for man to do to complete her 
work. According to the estimate of the French engineers, the 
whole expence of a deep canal, which should connect the Arabic 
Gulf with the Nile and the Mediterranean, make Africa an 
island, and shorten the voyage from Marseilles to Bombay one 
half, would not exceed <^700,000, a sum considerably less than 
has been expended on some single works of the same kind in 
Great Britain. 
As this celebrated ancient work was an object of commercial 
importance, as well as learned research, a survey of the ground 
was resolved upon shortly after the French established them- 
selves in Egypt. It was begun in January 1799, and, after va- 
rious interruptions, finished about the end of the same year. 
An abstract of the survey, accompanied by memoirs on the geo- 
graphy of the isthmus, and the ancient history of the canal, is 
published in the great French work, the Description de TEgypte , 
from which the statements and details in this paper are taken. 
The direct distance from the north extremity of the Arabic 
Gulf, to the nearest point of the Mediterranean, is about 75 
English miles ; and to the site of the ancient Bubastis, on the 
Pelusiac branch of the Nile, almost precisely the same. The 
length of a canal, from sea to sea, following the most suitable 
ground, would be 93 miles, — and that of the ancient canal, from 
the Arabic Gulf to the Nile, was about 92. Some learned mo- 
derns, perplexed by the vague and contradictory statements of 
the Greek and Roman writers respecting this Canal, have called 
in question its existence altogether, except partially as an aque- 
duct for irrigation. The French survey, however, has not only 
put to rest these doubts, but ascertained the precise line which 
it followed. Of 90 miles of inland water-communication of 
which it consisted, it appears that 65 were cut by human la- 
bour ; and of these 65 about one-half yet exists in a state less 
or more perfect. In many parts it is still so entire, that its di- 
mensions can be measured with tolerable accuracy, and little 
