May 24, 1858.] ADMIRALTY SURVEYS— SOUTH AFRICA— RED SEA. 265 
On the coast of Egypt Commander Mansell, with Messrs. Brooker 
and F. Skead, his assistants, have mapped the shore from Alexandria 
to Damietta, with plans on a large scale of the Bosetta month and 
the Bay of Abukir ; this completes the coast as far as El Arish, and 
forms a positive and important acquisition to our knowledge of the 
geography of these regions. I may here mention that Captain 
Spratt has recently drawn up a Memoir on the proposal for a 
Suez Canal, in which he disposes of the fallacious argument, that 
because the Delta of the Nile does not sensibly advance on the sea, 
therefore the river has ceased to bring down alluvium, by showing 
that the Delta has advanced to such a point that the stroke of the 
sea, arising from the prevalent winds, is sufficient to keep it in 
check, but that the detritus is still brought down and carried away 
to the eastward, and forms dunes and sandhills which, at Kas Burun, 
rise to a height of 270 feet above the level of the sea. The survey 
of the coast of Egypt having been finished, we trust that the time 
has arrived when the shores of Palestine and Syria will no longer 
be permitted to form the opprobrium of our maps, and that, in the 
middle of the nineteenth century, we shall at last ascertain the 
accurate geographical position of such ports and places as Tyre, 
Sidon, &c., the names of which are found in some of the earliest 
records of the human race. 
South Africa . — In the Cape Colony Mr. Francis Skead has surveyed 
the entrance of the St. John Biver, or Dmzivubu, on the south east 
coast, and has begun a closer examination of Table Bay. But the 
further survey of the coast to the eastward is paralysed by the 
want of a land survey of the colony, notwithstanding that each 
year as it passes away proves more strongly than the last that this 
want bars the progress of the settlers, hinders the development of 
the revenues of the district, and is attended with loss to the colonial 
exchequer. No one knows this better than Mr. Maclear, the 
enlightened astronomer at the Cape Observatory, and every time he 
sends home a fresh sheet of the printed account of the remeasure- 
ment of Lacaille’s arc of the meridian (which has now reached the 
234th page) he expresses his regret at the want of foresight evinced 
in not going forward with this survey. 
Bed Sea . — The increasing demand for telegraphic communication 
with India has led to the despatch of a vessel to carry a line of 
soundings from Bab el Mandeb to Suez. Captain Pullen, r.n., of 
H.M. S. Cyclops (known to most of my hearers for his hardy boat ex- 
pedition in the Arctic Sea from Point Barrow to the Mackenzie, in the 
