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[-extreme-]{+Dr. Wallin’s Route in Northern Arabia.
53
extreme+} limit of extraordinary tides at about 10,000 yards, or 5 nautical miles,
and of ordinary high tides at3J nautical miles to the N.N.W. of the town. The
ruins of Kulzum are about half a mile to the N. of Suweis, on the same or western
shore of the gulph; and a little above these ruins, or about a mile northward of
Suweis, the gulph is fordable at low-water ; and at that state of the tide this route
is generally taken by the Arabs and travellers passing to the opposite shore. At
other times the route is round the head of the gulph, joining the way from Agertid,
which passes at about 4 miles to the N. of the town, and then by the head of the
gulph between the line of ordinary and extraordinary tides, and therefore across
the Hat sands which are occasionally overflowed.
A great geographical question has been raised as to whether the Red Sea did, or
did not, formerly, How up beyond its present line of demarcation into the depression
or basin known as the bitter lakes, anti which is separated from the northern
extremity of the sea by a hank about 7 miles wide, rising in no place more than tM
feet above the mean high tides, and scarcely at all above the highest tides. (Societc
d’Etudes tie l’lsthme de Suez, Rapport de 1’lngtSnieur, 1847, p. 48, and Descrip,
de I’Eg. tom. xviii p. ;S44.) This basin extends north-westerly about 22 miles
(nautical), with a breadth varying from 1 to 6 miles, and is, in the deepest part, as much
its 57-86 feet Eng. below the level of high-water at Suweis according to the French
levellings of 1799 (Descrip, de l’Eg. tom. xi. p. 32(1, station 119), or 34-71 feet
Eng. by those of 1847 (viz. 2-27+ 8-31 inches == 10-SB metres—SocitSte d’Etudes
de I’Isthme de Suez, Rapport de l’lngenieur, 1847, pp. 25, 27-8).
The affirmative of this question is strongly maintained by M. da llois Ayme
(Deserip. de l’Eg. tom. xi. p. 371, and tom. xviii. p. 341), who is supported by M.
Le Pure (tom. xi. p. 310 n., and pp. 326, 323) and by D’Anville. M. du Bois Ayme
bases his view upon the appearance presented by the lakes; the coincidence between
the level of their former water line and that of the Red Sea; and the physical
construction of the Isthmus, and particularly of the barrier between the lakes and the
Red Sea (tom. xi. p. 372, and tom. xviii. p. 354-61); and upon the historic evidence
of the distance of the head of the Red Sea from the Mediterranean, and of the
position of the towns near it, as estimated from the ancient authors (tom. ii. p. 372, tom.
xviii. p. 362); he even thinks that the sea may have covered these lakes so late as
the reign of Hadrian, and possibly at the conquest of Egypt in 640 a.d. under the
Khalifat of ’Umar, hut certainly as late as the time of Herodotus.
The negative of the same question in all its details is maintained with equal
force and more elaborate argument by M. Rozibre (tom. vi. pp. 258, 273, 275, 285),
and, after him, by Malte-Brun (Geog. Eng. Transl. vol. iv. p. 49-57), and by the
engineers who examined the Isthmus in 1847 (Rapport, pp. 46-9, 75, 79). These
authorities hold that there has been no material change in the Isthmus of Suweis
within the historic period, and that although the lakes may have been filled
with sea water, their now being cut off from the sea is due to a geological
disturbance. The levellings, if correct, effected by the engineers of 1847, prove the
northern barrier of the lakes, near Mfikfar, to be about 5 feet higher than the
operations of 1799 made them (Rapport, p. 28), and, consequently, as much above
mean high water at Suweis, so that the northern would be at least as sufficient as
the southern barrier, which, as has been mentioned, is not more than 2^ feet above
ordinary high tides (Rapport, p. 48, and Descrip, de l’Eg. tom. xviii. p. 344), for
preventing the flow of the sea beyond it. A main point on the negative side of the
argument, before the results of 1847 were known, was, that if the Red Sea had ever
filled the hitter lakes, it would have overflowed the barrier at their northern end,
and found its own way to the Mediterranean; but now, consequent upon those
results, the late engineers lay more stress upou the opinion that the formation of
both the northern and southern barrier (the last, be it recollected, separating the
basin of the lakes from the Red Sea) are geologically similar to, and
contemporaneous with the lower tertiary formations which compose the Isthmus and the flanks of
the adjoining hills (Rapport, p. 47).
If such really be the ease, how came, it may be asked, the hitter lakes to acquire
their present shaped basin? That they have at some former time been filled liy the
se-a. all who have examined them appear to he agreed upon ; and, further, that at an
early epoch they constituted, in the form ofa long narrow inlet contracted at its
mouth, near Suweis, the head of the Red Sea. Now, on the latter part of this
hypothesis, it will necessarily follow that the formation of the southern harrier, which
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