was in his time frequented by the Greeks, and by inhabitants of all the commercial nations of Europe. "From India," he says, "they import all sorts of spices which are brought by Christian merchants."* During the middle ages the Indian trade was generally carried on by this route, and formed one of the principal sources of the wealth of Venice, though the Sultans of Egypt at times assumed the monopoly of some branches of the trade, particularly pepper, to the great injury of the Venetian merchants. So highly did the Venetians them. selves esteem the value of the commercial relations carried on through Egypt, that the possession of Egypt was, in the opinion of their statesmen, preferable to the possession of India, for a maritime power in the Mediterranean. And, perhaps, had the republic of Venice been able to execute the project of conquering Egypt, the commerce of India would, in great part, have been preserved even to this day by the Mediterranean powers.

* Archer's edition, vol. i. p. 157.

+ Daru Histoire de Venise, tom. ii. pp. 349, 439.

Histoire du Commerce de Venise par Marino, tom. iv. liv. 3, 4. Histoire de Venise, Daru, iii. 20. The route by Kench and Kosseir is still used as an easy way to make the pilgrimage to Mecca. The author has seen Persian pilgrims, who have taken the Austrian steamers from Trebizond, Constantinople, and Smyrna, to Alexandria. From thence they mounted the Nile to Kench; instead of joining the Hadj at Cairo and traversing the desert for forty days on camels. After crossing the desert, in six days, from Kench to Kosseir, they took boats to Djidda.

The Canal between the Nile and the Red Sea. Nearly one thousand years before the birth of Christ, the wealth acquired by Solomon, in consequence of his becoming a participator in the Phoenician trade on the Red Sea, excited the envy of the sovereigns of Egypt.* Shishak, or Sesonchis, in order to secure as large a portion as possible of this wealth by the shortest means, invaded Judea and plundered Jerusalem, during the reign of Rehoboam, the son of Solomon. "Shishak, king of Egypt, came up against Jerusalem, and he took away the treasures of the house of the Lord, and the treasures of the king's house; he even took away all and he took away all the shields of gold which Solomon had made."† Now this Sesonchis had his capital at Babastés, and is undoubtedly the u Sesostris mentioned by Aristotle, Strabo, and Pliny, as having conceived the project of uniting the Nile, in the neighbourhood of his capital, with the Red Sea. He seems to have commenced the work, but he did not complete it.

This great project was resumed by Pharaoh Necho, who reigned in Egypt about six hundred years before Christ, and who, like his predecessor

1 Kings ix. 26.-" And King Solomon made a navy of ships in Ezion-geber, which is beside Eloth, on the shore of the Red Sea, in the land of Edom." Also, 2 Chronicles viii. 17. † 1 Kings xiv. 27; 2 Chronicles xii. 9.

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Shishak, had his attention divided between plundering the wealth of Palestine and Syria, which was derived from the commerce of the Red Sea, and rendering his own subjects masters of that commerce. Though the work at the canal was prosecuted for some time with great energy, it was again abandoned. It was subsequently completed by Darius, after the Persians had conquered Egypt; but it was left unconnected with the Red Sea, in consequence of the level of that sea having been found to be much higher than the level of the land in the Delta. In the time of Ptolemy the Second, the adaptation of locks to canals having been discovered, this ingenious contrivance was adopted to connect the mouth of the canal with the Red Sea. The undertaking was then completed, and at the height of the inundation a portion of the water of the Nile flowed into the Gulf of Suez.*

This canal, even after the improvements it received from Trajan and Hadrian, did not contain water for more than six months in the year. This circumstance, and the delay experienced by vessels in reaching the mouth of the canal, from the violence of the northerly winds in the Red Sea, prevented its becoming the great route of the Indian trade; and it was generally only used as a means of transporting Eastern produce to the Mediterranean

*

Compare Herodotus, book ii. s. 158, with Diodortis, book i. s. 33, and Strabo, book xvii. c. 1.

when the more expeditious routes, by Berenice or Myos Hormos, were interrupted by tribes of predatory Arabs.

The great utility of this canal was in the facilities it afforded to the Egyptians of conveying their agricultural produce to the shores of the Red Sea, and dispersing it over all the commercial establishments, which were then numerous on the arid coast of Arabia. Even the Phoenician commerce, and the trade of Solomon's subjects, could not have existed without drawing large supplies of provisions from Egypt.

This canal remained open for about thirteen hundred years, having been finally closed by the Caliph Al Mansor, in the year 765, to prevent the Egyptians exporting provisions to a rebel who had seized Medina. The agricultural resources of Egypt can never, indeed, be fully developed, except when this canal is open, as the population of Arabia would always afford an excellent market for much of the produce of the Delta.

The Venetians offered to restore this canal, in modern times, at their own expense; and the work would not be attended with any engineering difficulties, nor would the expense be great in comparison with the magnitude of the undertaking.*

* The author of this memoir published "a Historical Account of the Canal which connected the Nile and the Mediterranean in ancient times," in Blackwood's Magazine, for August, 1844, in which he endeavoured to collect every historical notice

The Indian Trade will soon begin to be divided between the Route through Egypt and that round the Cape of Good Hope.

At present the trade between Europe, India, and China is almost entirely carried on round the Cape of Good Hope. A very small quantity of the produce of China, it is true, is conveyed to Europe through Russia; and some merchandize, of great value and small bulk, sometimes passes through Egypt. But there are many signs of the times which indicate that, in a very few years, the rapidly. increasing consumption of Indian produce on the shores of the Mediterranean will cause no inconsiderable portion of the Indian trade to take the route by the Red Sea and Egypt. The population of the countries round the Mediterranean and the Black Sea, and on the banks of the Danube and the Don, is rapidly increasing in numbers and wealth. Railroads will soon connect Trieste with the centre of Germany and with the Baltic, and Odessa with Moscow, the centre of Russia, and St. Petersburg. The expense of transport by steam, both in the Red Sea and the Mediterranean, is at the same time diminishing, in consequence of the improvements already made in steam navigation,

of any importance relating to it in ancient writers. He has since examined its remains, from Balbeis to Suez, with care and attention, in company with Mr. Paton, author of the Modern Syrians and Servia.