The author infers that the houses occupied only a part of the vast space inclosed by the wall; and he furnishes a modern instance in the same region, of a city surrounded by a wall 7 miles in circuit; yet Basora contains only from 40 to 50,000 inhabitants; the wall including date-groves, and corn-fields. It must also be remembered that the Euphrates flowed through the centre of Babylon, and is from 400 to 500 feet wide in that part of its course. In the western division, stood the palace of the Babylonian kings; on the east, the temple of Belus, the square of which was two stadia, and the tower itself one stadium; on which, resting as a base, seven other turrets were built in regular succession; and the summit was crowned by a statue of Belus, 40 feet in height, in an upright posture. The ascent was on the outside, and, winding from the ground, rose to the highest tower. It was situated in the centre of the division; whence probably it has retained the name of Maclub to this day had that appellation signified ruins, it must have been Maghlûb. The vicinity of Is, the modern Hit, about 128 miles higher up the Euphrates, supplied the bitumen which formed the cement of these buildings. After a lapse of several centuries from her decline, Babylon might still be compared only with Seleucia; her lofty walls and hanging gardens are proofs of the numbers and the luxury of her inhabitants. At the present period, the traveller who remounts the current of the Euphrates, after having passed Hilla, a considerable town under the Califat, and now containing 10,000 inhabitants, perceives on either bank of the river a wide extent of ruins, which mark the place where once stood the capital of Semiramis; and he recognizes the still inexhausted store of baked bricks which furnished the materials for the future cities of Ctesiphon, Baghdad, and Hilla.

The 15th section of this volume is occupied by an inquiry unconnected with the history of Herodotus. In the reign of Tiglath Pileser, king of Assyria, the kingdom of Samaria was invaded by that prince; and the tribes of Reuben, Gad, and the half tribe of Manasseh, were carried captives into his own country, by the victor. These tribes were placed by the conqueror in Halah and in Habor, by the river of Gozan, and in the cities of the Medes.' In a subsequent reign, the remaining ten tribes were also carried off; among whom were Daniel and Tobit the latter of whom was settled in Rages, which our author supposes to be Rai, a city of Al Gebal, once of considerable splendor, though now in ruins. It may be inferred that the other places mentioned were situated at no great distance; and Major Rennell accordingly finds Hala and Habor in the district of Chalchal and city of Abhar, both watered by

the

the Kizil Ozan, which falls into the Caspian. He alludes to the opinion of some modern writers, that the Afghans are the descendants of the ten tribes of Israel carried into captivity. There is nothing more certain than that, though ashamed of this descent since their conversion to Islamism, the Afghans are at this day divided into ten tribes, distinguished by the name of one of the sons of the patriarch Jacob.

Herodotus, in common with most other writers of antiquity, appears to have excluded Egypt from Africa. From that country, on the east, Africa extended west to the promontory of Soloeis, (supposed by our author to be Cape Cantin,) which terminated the 3d division of the earth. It was inhabited by the different nations of Lybians; the districts alone excepted, which were in possession of the Greeks and Phenicians. The remote parts of Lybia beyond the sea-coast were infested by beasts of prey but, from the Egyptian Thebes to the columns of Hercules, extended a vast and horrid space, without water, wood, or animals, and totally destitute of moisture. The three regions here described indisputably lay parallel to the Mediterranean : but the knowlege of Africa which Herodotus possessed was not bounded by the limits of the inhospitable Sahara; he had been informed at Cyrene of an attempt made by a party of bold adventurers to penetrate southward across the desert; and that their researches had terminated at a city washed by a great river, which flowed from east to west, and abounded in crocodiles. The inhabitants were black, and of diminutive stature. The true course of the Niger, thus described by Herodotus, was known to Europeans only since the discoveries of Mr. Park. It is true that the former, conceiving it to be the Nile, leads it afterward into Egypt: but this mistake will excite little surprise, when it is considered that the sources of the principal branch of the Egyptian river are unknown at this day. That which was visited and described by Mr. Bruce rolls a smaller body of water, and runs a shorter course than the Nehr al Abiad: but it must be observed that the former retains the name of the Nile, from its source to its confluence with the Mediterranean.

The knowledge of Herodotus, respecting the detail of the interior parts of Africa extended only to the upper course of the Nile, southward; and on the south-west, to the Niger. And, although he knew the fact, simply, that Africa was surrounded by the ocean, yet he seems to have known no particulars relating to the coasts, beyond the places to which the Carthaginians traded on the west side, perhaps to the neighbourhood of Sierra Leona; nor on the east, beyond the Macrobian Ethiopians, (the Abyssinians,) who appear to have extended to the ocean, beyond the outlet of the Arabian gulph,'

The

The breadth of the isthmus of Suez has been hitherto overrated. Mr. Rennell gives the exact distance from Pelusium (Tinah) to Arsinoe (Suez) at 56 British miles. The existence of a navigable communication between the Nile and the Red Sea, notwithstanding the works ascribed to Necho, to Sesostris, to Ptolemy, and to Trajan, is still involved in considerable doubt. The Mohammedan historian asserts the construction of a canal in the reign of the Caliph Omar: but that it continued navigable only a short time must at any rate be admitted. Traces of its course are still described by modern travellers: but, had its utility equalled the expectations of its projectors, such repeated attempts would scarcely have been rendered so soon abortive. The gradual retrocession of the Red Sea is proved by its actual distance of a mile and a half from the former port of Khulzum. The Pelusiac branch of the Nile only exists as a periodical stream running over a different bed; while the city of Bubastis, famed for the numbers and superstition of its inhabitants, is faintly traced in the modern village of Bastus, 17 miles N. W. of Belhesa.

In the 18th and 19th sections, the author remarks on the changes, in respect of form and extent, that have happened to the Delta of Egypt, since the early times of history; together with the probable cause of those changes; and he inquires into the position occupied by the city of Memphis, and the change of the course of the Nile, in its neighbourhood.

Considering (says the Major,) the extreme fatness of the Delta; the quality of its soil, which is totally different from that of the adjacent countries; its form, which projects so far into the sea, beyond the general line of the coast, on the one hand; and on the other, filling up a space, which, reasoning from appearances, looks like a bay, or gulph of the sea; one can hardly doubt that the space which it occupies, was originally a part of the sea, from the neighbourhood of Pelusium, or of Mount Casius, to that of Alexandria; and southward to the foot of the hills of the Pyramids, and of Mokattam ; which is yet allowing little more for the depth of the bay, from the supposed line of the coast, than the lower point of the Delta now advances beyond it. No doubt, when we carry back our ideas to the time when the sea washed the base of the rock, on which the pyramids of Memphis stand, the present base of which is washed by the inundation of the Nile, at an elevation, most probably of 70 or 80 feet, above the surface of the same sea; we are lost in the contemplation of the vast interval of time, that must necessarily have elapsed since the foundation of the Delta was first laid.'

In the natural progress of alluvion, the depositions acquire a mass capable of separating the parent river into different channels, by an apex: while, the sides spreading wider as they recede from this point, the newly emerged land assumes a

triangular

triangular form. Its base gradually enlarges by new depositions; the mass, as it acquires a firmer consistence, confines the river to fewer channels; and the apex of the Delta changes its position by receding farther from the source. Thus, the author states grounds for supposing that the apex of the Delta of Egypt was once situated to the southward of the site of Memphis, and he produces less equivocal testimony of a change of position towards the north, in times posterior to that distant and doubtful æra. The site of the centre of antient Memphis is placed by Mr. Rennell in 29° 53'.

The Nile is represented by antient writers as emptying itself into the sea by seven mouths. 1st, The Canopic, the most western, washed at its confluence the site of Canopus, the remains of which are still seen in the vicinity of Abûkir; Naucratis, the sole emporium of the empire, stood on its banks, and is recognized by our author in the modern Salhajar; while Rahmani represents the antient Hermopolis. This branch has gradually forsaken its bed, and occupies the Bolbitine channel, which was originally an artificial one. By this change, the Delta has been abridged, as has been observed before, about 18 miles of the western part of its base; and which is become as barren a desert as the adjoining one of. Lybia.' 2d, The Bolbitine has now become the most considerable mouth of the Nile, the Phatmetic excepted; it flows by Rosetta, 16 miles distant from the Canopic. 3d, The Sebennitic is now of little importance, and discharges itself into lake Brulos, about 30 miles to the east of the Bolbitine. 4th, The Phatmetic is now the principal channel of the Nile; it flows past Damietta, at the distance of about 32 miles from the Sebennitic. 5th and 6th, The Mendesian and Tanitic are now only outlets to the lake Menzala. 7th, The Pelusiac is now only a periodical stream, and probably always inferior to the Phatmetic and Canopic branches. The lakes which skirt the coast of Egypt may be regarded as portions of the sea not yet filled up, but gradually undergoing that operation, which is more observable in the western than in the eastern division. The lake Mareotis is nearly on a level with the country, covered with herbage, and produces some palm-trees. The tradition of Homer that the island of Pharos, in early times, lay at the distance of a day's sail from the mouth of the Nile, may (in our author's opinion) be explained by the slow but uninterrupted progress of the above process: but with these supposed operations of nature, the limited duration assigned to the world in the sacred books of Moses is not reconcileable. If the sea washed the rock on which the

pyramids

pyramids stand, it must have been at a period extremely anterior to the building of Memphis by Menes; since the gradual depositions of the river had even then produced the Delta. Yet Menes must have lived only a few centuries subsequent to the flood.--A physical objection occurs, of still greater weight. There was a time when' the rock of the pyramids was nearly on a level with the sea; it is now 80 feet above that level, not by the retrocession of that ele- ' ment, but by the accession of height gained by the land in consequence of the depositions of the Nile ;-such is the opinion of Major Rennell. We shall suppose that, when the city of Memphis and the pyramids were founded, the site was 40 feet above the level of the sea; in this case, Memphis, the pyramids, and of course many of the cities of antient Egypt, would now be 40 feet under ground; a supposition not warranted by fact.

In the midst of the arid deserts of Lybia, are found interspersed small tracts of fertile land, covered with luxuriant herbage, shaded by trees yielding delicious fruits, and refreshed by rivulets of pure water gushing from perennial fountains. The contrast with the surrounding waste heightens the charms of these delightful spots, and procured for them the title of the "Happy Isles." The Greeks distinguished them by the name of Oases, which Mr. Rennell derives from the Arabic word "Wah," whence, he says, the district in which they are found is denominated "Al Wahat." We have never met with this Arabic word; "Wahed" signifies solitary, unique; "Aluvi" bears the same meaning;

is an extensive valley: but with Wah we are unacquainted. The author's explanation of Arabic terms is not always happy; thus, he tells us that "Bahir" signifies a lake: but its real meaning is the sea.

Major Rennell observes that Mr. Browne describes the Greater Oasis as consisting of large detached spots; or a number of islands extending in a line, (from south to north, at the distance of about 75 or eighty miles from Egypt,) separated by intervals of desert. Probably the Lesser Oasis may be of the same nature; as the same mountains that impend over the greater one are known to continue northward: i. e. in the same direction with the Lesser Oasis. Bahnasa may be in one of the spots, and the most northerly of all; the southernmost spot may lie within 40 miles of the northernmost of those of the Greater Oasis; and the two, collectively, may form, in effect, one long chain. Finally, the interval of 40 miles, by being very much greater than the intervals be

tween