282 Mr Maclaren’s Account of the Ancient Cmial 
port of Arsinoe must have been merely an entrepot. The engi- 
neers, in fact, observed that the canal, in its latest state, as 
shewn by its remains, was separated from the sea by a solid 
dike, without any gate ; and they inferred, from certain traces 
yet visible, that ships came hither to procure from it a supply of 
fresh water. When we consider, then, the limited navigation 
afforded by this canal, the expence of cleaning and supporting 
it, and that perhaps of protecting it against the destructive ef- 
forts of the Arabs, whose incursions it prevented, and whose 
trade, as carriers, it supplanted, we need not be surprised that 
it always disappointed its projectors, and was suffered to fall to 
decay. For nearly 500 years under the Ptolemies, and the 
Roman Emperors, it is certain that the route by Berenice and 
Coptos, 400 miles farther south, was the great thoroughfare of 
eastern commerce. Berenice, it is probable, was a better port 
than Arsinoe ; and ships, by stopping at the former, saved 400 
miles of navigation, in the upper part of the Gulf, the shoals and 
reefs of which were probably much dreaded by ancient mari- 
ners. 
It is scarcely necessary to state, that the plan of bringing a 
navigable stream of salt water horn the Red Sea to the Nile, must 
have been at all times exposed to one insuperable objection. In 
the Delta the inhabitants have no other water, either for irriga- 
tion or domestic use, but that of the river, which would have 
been rendered totally unfit for both purposes by an admixture 
with the brine of the ocean. A modification of this plan, how- 
ever, might be, and probably was, adopted at some period in the 
history of the canal. A navigable current of salt water could 
have been carried through the desert to Pelusium, and thrown 
into the bay, without touching the Nile. It would, of course, 
have a fall of 25 feet from the low-water level at Arsinoe. 
Now, by giving the bed of the canal, from the Red Sea to the 
Bitter Lakes, a descent a little greater than 3 inches in the mile *; 
and, by discharging the surplus waters of the lakes into the de- 
sert by a regulating sluice, placed at the levee, or mound, 
* The fall in the river from Cairo to the sea, at the height of the floods when 
the navigation is most active, was found to be about 9 inches per league of 2.8 
miles. 
