(bb), and coloured blue on the Map, and may for dis­tinction be called The Bir Makdal Line.

2. A line embracing the entire length of the bed of the Bitter Lakes to Thaubastum, and from that place proceeding by the shortest practicable line to the Bay of Tineh and avoiding all the northern hollows.—This line is marked (c c c) on the Map, and is coloured green, and may be distinguished as The Thaubastum Line.

3. A line passing through the bed of the Bitter Lakes, the Lake of Themsah and the Birket el Karash to Has el Moyeh, and thence by the shortest practicable line to the Bay of Tineh.—This line is coloured yellow on the Map and marked (d d), and it may be distinguished as The Ras el Moyeh Line.

The first portion of the Isthmus common to all projects of communication may be said to commence about one mile and a half north of the village of Suez, at the point where the canal of Sesostris or Necho entered the Gulph, and from thence northward thirteen and a half miles to the S. E. angle of the Bitter Lake; and along the whole of this dis­tance traces of the ancient canal are distinctly to be seen, the walls or banks of which aFe exposed in depths varying from 3 to 16 feet; and near the point where the canal ter­minates at the Bitter Lake, the bottom still retains a depth of 16^ English feet below the high-water-mark at Suez.

At the Gulph of Suez, and for three miles north of it, a tongue or spit of sand crosses the line of the ancient canal, and being elevated three feet above the high-water­mark of the Red Sea, prevents the water of that sea from passing into the canal; but such a passage is still further prevented by a golid dyke or wall which the French engineers observed constructed across the canal near its entrance to the Gulph.