Page:Africa by Élisée Reclus, Volume 1.djvu/449

 so-called "River of Trajan," excavated, like the older river of Nekos, between the Nile, the Timsah, and the Bitter Lakes, across the desert zone skirting the arable lands. As Letronne has observed, the exploitation of the great porphyry quarries at Mount Claudian would have been unintelligible, unless some waterway existed between the sea and the river for forwarding the huge monoliths extracted from the mountain. They could not certainly have been transported to the Nile Valley over the intervening hills and rocks of the Arabian range.

Like most of the works executed by the Romans, Trajan's Canal was made to last, and in fact it was maintained for centuries. Makrizi tells us that in the early period of Islam it was still accessible to vessels. After seizing Egypt, Amru had little more to do than clear out the channel and restore the sluices. But be appears to have harboured even more ambitious views, intending to open a canal directly

from the Red Sea to Farama on the shores of the Gulf of Pelusium, possibly by utilising the cuttings previously made by Darius and the Ptolemies. But Omar fearing, as is said, lest the Greeks might take advantage of this highway to attack the pilgrims journeying to Mecca, refused to sanction the work. Nor did the canal restored by Amru last very long, having been closed a hundred and thirty-three years afterwards by order of the Caliph Abu Jafar-el-Mansur, to prevent some rebel from receiving his supplies.

During the interval of nearly eleven centuries from that epoch to modern times, the slow work of nature gradually effaced the work of man. Houses, sluices, dams disappeared; the dykes became choked by alluvial deposits and sands, while marshy depressions took the places of the embankments. The coast-line has been modified round the gulfs and lagoons; but numerous vestiges nevertheless still