604. The canal of Alexandria wanted nothing more than to be cleared of the sand which had accumulated in it, and to be defended by a dike against the incroachments of the sea, which the citizens of Alexandria refused to do for themselves, lest the repair of all other public works should be expected from them, and the Beys would not do it for them. _Dolomieu’s Letter._ Vol. 20. p. 50. He says the Alexandria of the Greeks was situated on a tongue of land, formed by earth lately accumulated, when the city was founded.—He means, I suppose, that the sea had left it but lately. This is possible. The natural soil round the city is rock intermixed with sand. The vegetable mold appears to have been extraneous. If he suppose that district, like the Delta, to have been a deposition of the river, this seems utterly improbable; all the circumstances are at variance, which in such a case should be common to both. The land which divided the lake from the sea is a rocky ridge, which seems to have undergone no variation for a great length of time. The remark as to the column of Pompey is not new; but I cannot agree that the capital and base are of bad taste. The sharp relief of the foliage and mouldings is worn off by time, and it never was perhaps possible to exhibit on granite marble the finer strokes of the chissel, but the proportions, though not those of the later Corinthian, are strictly conformable to those of the purest age of architecture. What may have been discovered relatively to the obelisk by digging is uncertain; but from a comparison of this with the circumstances attending the obelisks at Thebes, it cannot be deduced that much is lost of its height. It must have been erected in the most flourishing state of the city, and while it remained in that state, it seems scarcely probable that such multitudes of ruins should have existed as to raise other buildings on them. I am satisfied, from the position of the one that remains entire, and the broken one near it, they never underwent a second arrangement, but remain in their relative position, as at the gate of some public building. The obelisk is in a very low part of the city, (which indeed is all very low,) and very little above the level of the sea—how does this accord with the ruins of other buildings being yet found under it? Perhaps in this part a firm foundation was not found very near the surface, and the builders have formed an artificial one. The French antiquary may have mistaken this for the ruins of buildings. P. 59. My measurement of the height of the pyramid was a few feet short of this, but does not very materially differ from the one here given. P. 95. _El Maraboot_ is a kind of fort, and the tomb of a saint, situated on a high ground in the neighbourhood of the Gulf of the Arabs, a good view of which it commands. =No. VI.= _Explanation of the Plate facing page 286._