On the contrary, the Etesian winds blowing all Summer upon that coast, from the westward of north, and a current setting constantly to the eastward, it is impossible that any part of the mud of the Nile can go so high to the windward of any of the mouths of that river.
It is well known, that the action of these winds, and the constancy of that current, has thrown a great quantity of mud, gravel, and sand, into all the ports on the coast of Syria.
All vestiges of old Tyre are defaced; the ports of Sidon, [1]Berout, Tripoli, and [2]Latikea, are all filled up by the accretion of sand; and, not many days before my leaving Sidon, Mr de Clerambaut, consul of France, shewed me the pavements of the old city of Sidon, 7½ feet lower than the ground upon which the present city stands, and considerably farther back in the gardens nearer to Mount Libanus.
This every one in the country knows is the effect of that easterly current setting upon the coast, which, as it acts perpendicularly to the course of the Nile when discharging itself, at all or any of its mouths, into the Mediterranean, must hurry what it is charged with on towards the coast of Syria, and hinder it from settling opposite to, or making those additions to the land of Egypt, which [3]Herodotus has vainly supposed.
The 20th of June, early in the morning, we had a distant prospect of Alexandria rising from the sea. Was not the stateof
