SANDS OF EGYPT. 
401 
ing of tlie desert sands. The winds across the isthmus are 
almost uniformly from the north, and they swept it clean of 
flying sands long ages since. The traces of the ancient canal 
between the Red Sea and the Nile are easily followed for a 
considerable distance from Suez. Had the drifts upon the 
isthmus been as formidable as some have feared and others 
have hoped, those traces would have been obliterated, and 
Lake Timsah and the Bitter Lakes tilled up, many centuries 
ago. The few particles driven by the rare east and west 
winds toward the line of the canal, would easily be arrested 
by plantations or other simple methods, or removed by dredg¬ 
ing. The real dangers and difficulties of this magnificent 
enterprise—and they are great—consist in the nature of the 
soil to be removed in order to form the line, and especially in 
the constantly increasing accumulation of sea sand at the south¬ 
ern terminus by the tides of the Red Sea, and at the northern, 
by the action of the winds. Both seas are shallow for miles 
from the shore, and the excavation and maintenance of deep 
channels, and of capacious harbors with easy and secure en¬ 
trances, in such localities, is doubtless one of the hardest prob¬ 
lems offered to modern engineers for practical solution. 
Sands of Egypt. 
The sand let fall in Egypt by the north wind is derived, 
not from the desert, but from a very different source—the sea. 
Considerable quantities of sand are thrown up by the Mediter¬ 
ranean, at and between the mouths of the Nile, and indeed 
along almost the whole southern coast of that sea, and drifted 
into the interior to distances varying according to the force of 
the wind and the abundance and quality of the material. The 
sand so transported contributes to the gradual elevation of the 
Delta, and of the banks and bed of the river itself. But just 
in proportion as the bed of the stream is elevated, the height 
of the water in the annual inundations is increased also, and as 
the inclination of the channel is diminished, the rapidity of the 
current is checked, and the deposition of the slime it holds in 
