ond the line
of the coast; although, as the land has not advanced perceptibly for the
last eighteen hundred years, it may be somewhat doubtful whether the
whole of the apparent protrusion is not due to the natural conformation
of the coast, rather than to any changes made by the action of the
river.

The Delta of the Nile is so level itself, and so little raised above the
level of the Mediterranean, that the land seems almost a continuation of
the same surface with the sea, only, instead of blue waters topped with
white-crested waves, we have broad tracts of waving grain, and gentle
swells of land crowned with hamlets and villages. In approaching the
coast, the navigator has no distant view of all this verdure and beauty.
It lies so low that it continues beneath the horizon until the ship is
close upon the shore. The first landmarks, in fact, which the seaman
makes, are the tops of trees growing apparently out of the water, or the
summit of an obelisk, or the capital of a pillar, marking the site of
some ancient and dilapidated city.

The most easterly of the channels by which the waters of the river find
their way through the Delta to the sea, is called, as it will be seen
marked upon the map, the Pelusiac branch. It forms almost the boundary
of the fertile region of the Delta on the eastern side. There was an
ancient city named Pelusium near the mouth of it. This was, of course,
the first Egyptian city reached by those who arrived by land from the
eastward, traveling along the shores of the Mediterranean Sea. On
account of its thus marking the eastern frontier of the country, it
became a point of great importance, and is often mentioned in the
histories of ancient times.

The westernmost mouth of the Nile, on the other hand, was called the
Canopic mouth. The distance along the coast from the Canopic mouth to
Pelusium was about a hundred miles. The outline of the coast was
formerly, as it still continues to be, very irregular, and the water
shallow. Extended banks of sand protruded into the sea, and the sea
itself, as if in retaliation, formed innumerable creeks, and inlets, and
lagoons in the land. Along this irregular and uncertain boundary the
waters of the Nile and the surges of the Mediterranean kept up an
eternal war, with energies so nearly equal, that now, after the lapse of
eighteen hundred years since the state of the contest began to be
recorded, neither side has been found to have gained any perceptible