Siculus speak of a canal of communication between the Nile, the Mediterranean, and the Red Sea, and M. Del'isle published a map in 1704, in which he traces one end of a canal to the most eastern part of the Nile, and which he judges to be a part of that which formerly joined the Nile with the Red Sea.[A] [A] See Mem. de l'Acad. Sciences, 1734. In the third part of a book entitled, "Connoisance de l'Ancien Monde, or the Knowledge of the Old World," printed in 1707, we meet with the like sentiment; and it is there said, from Diodorus Siculus, that it was Neco, King of Egypt, who began this canal, that Darius, King of Persia, continued it, and that it was finished by Ptolemy II. who conducted it as far as the city Arsinoe, and that it could be opened and shut when they found it needful. Without desiring to deny these circumstances, I must own, that to me they appear doubtful. I do not know whether the violence and height of the tide in the Red Sea, would not be necessarily communicated to this canal; it appears to me, at least, that it would have required great precautions to confine the waters, to avoid inundations and to preserve this canal in good repair. Though historians assert that this canal was undertaken and finished, yet they do not tell us the length of its duration; and the remains which are pretended to be even now perceptible, are perhaps all that was ever done of it. The name of the Red Sea has been given to this arm of the ocean, because it has the appearance of that colour in every part where corals, or madrepores, are met with at the bottom. In the Histoire General des Voyages, vol. i. pages 198 and 199, it is said, "Before he quitted the Red Sea, D. Jean examined what might have been the reason why that name was given to it by the ancients, and if, in fact, this sea differed from others in its colour. He knew that Pliny had given several opinions on the origin of this name. Some derived it from a King named Erythros, who reigned in those parts, and which, in the Greek language, signifies red. Others imagined that the reflection of the sun produces a reddish colour on the surface of the water, and others that the water was naturally red. The Portuguese, who had made several voyages to the entrance of the straits, asserted that all the coasts of Arabia were very red, and that the sand and dust which the wind carries into the sea, tinged the water of the same colour.