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refragable proof that their country was always in a flourishing condition, and possessed a considerable commerce with other nations. The Egyptians, however, had as great an aversion to foreign traders as to shepherds; and it was long before they undertook any work for improving their commercial communications. At length, however, the canal, which had been carried as far as the longitudinal valley between the Red Sea and the Mediterranean, began to excite their attention as affording a cheap means of transport for that portion of the produce of the country which was purchased by the inhabitants of Arabia and of the shores of the Red Sea. We have the testimony of Aristotle, Strabo, and Pliny, that the project of forming a canal to unite the Nile with the Red Sea was entertained by Sesostris.[1] Aristotle says, "that Egypt, the most ancient seat of mankind, was formed by the river Nile, as appears from the examination of the country bordering on the Red Sea. One of the ancient kings attempted to form a navigable communication between the river and the sea; but Sesostris, finding that the waters of the Red Sea were higher than those of the Nile, both he and Darius, after him, desisted from the attempt, lest the lower part of the delta should be inundated with salt water." It is extremely difficult to ascertain what king is meant by Sesostris, since that name seems to have been given by the Greeks to more that one of the distinguished monarchs of the country. Aristotle, however, clearly refers in his account to the king he calls Sesostris, and to an earlier monarch. The one may have been Sethosis, who reigned about B.C. 1291, and the other, Sesonchis of Bubastes, the Shishac of Scripture, in the year B.C. 976. These sovereigns may have converted the canal of irrigation into a regular commercial route; and the last may have commenced the greater work of connecting it with the bitter lakes. The fear of inundating the Delta with salt water, by cutting through the northern shore of the Red Sea, and allowing a communication with the bitter lakes to remain always open, has been shown by the French engineers, whose report is printed in the great work on Egypt, to be no idle fear.[2] [1] Arist. Meteorol. i. 14. Strabo, lib. i. c. 2, vol. i. p. 60; lib. xvii. c. 1, vol. iii. 443.--Ed. Tauch. Plinii Natur. Hist., lib. vi. 33. [2] _Memoire sur la communication de la Mer des Indes a la Mediterranee, par la Mer Rouge et l'Isthme de So
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