a canal, upon which their existence depended. The people, then, were already civilized and powerful who placed their city on such a site as that of This. There were kings in Egypt, we may be sure, before Menes. The Egyptians themselves spoke of his predecessors as ‘the deceased,’ that is, those human rulers whose names had been lost. It was in the time of these prehistoric, we may even say premythical kings, that this This Canal, and indeed, probably, that the great Bahr Jusuf Canal itself, which is throughout Egypt a second Nile, were constructed. There were, therefore, at that day, men who were as great in hydraulic engineering as any who came after them, but who yet lived at so remote a time, that no trace of them could be found even in the far-reaching and tenacious traditions of Egypt. If the Bahr Jusuf, which passed by This, was older than the city, so much the better for our argument. CHAPTER XIV. THE FAIOUM. Opera basilica.—BACON. The history of the reclamation of the Arsinoite nome, or department, now the Faioum, would, if it had been preserved, or could be recovered, throw much precious light on the antiquity and power of the civilization of the primæval monarchy. But the simple fact that its details had been lost, even in the remote days of Theban learning and magnificence, when Egypt was at the summit of its greatness and glory, possesses of itself much historical value, for it shows at how much earlier a day the great undertaking had been carried out; and that, as we know, by such a system of hydraulic works, the newly-won district, too, having been adorned with such cities and buildings, as leave no doubt about the high character of its (were it not for the remains of these works and structures) prehistoric civilization. The Faioum is, geographically, a basin formed by a depression in the Libyan range, about sixty miles to the south of the Pyramids of Gizeh. The basin is about the size of Oxfordshire, or Surrey, that is to say, it contains about 750 square, miles. More than 100 of these may be occupied by the Birket el Keiroon, a natural lake, which forms its northern and western boundary. This large piece of water resembles a rude crescent, with its convex side to the north and north-west, and its concave side to the south and south-east. On the former side the contiguous desert rises into a hilly ridge; this boundary being in fact an offset of the African range. The other side of the lake looks upon the dry and shelving descent of the basin, which, from its southern summit down to the edge of the water, has a fall of about 100 feet, being about fifteen miles across. There are considerable discrepancies as to the precise amount of this fall; some measurements making it more, and some less than the 100 feet here given.