Alexandria, and its environs, are part of the desert of Barca, too high to have ever been overflowed by the Nile, from any part of its lower branches; or else there would have been no necessity for going so high up as above Rosetto, to get level enough, to bring water down to Alexandria by the canal.
Dr Shaw adds, that the ground hereabout may have been an island; and so it may, and so may almost any other place in the world; but there is no sort of indication that it was so, nor visible means by which it was formed.
We saw no vegetable from Alexandria to Medea, excepting some scattered roots of Absinthium; nor were these luxuriant, or promising to thrive, but though they had not a very strong smell, they were abundantly bitter; and their leaves seemed to have imbibed a quantity of saline particles, with which the soil of the whole desert of Barca is strongly impregnated.
We saw two or three gazels, or antelopes, walking one by one, at several times, in nothing differing from the species of that animal, in the desert of Barca and Cyrenaicum; and the [1] jerboa, another inhabitant of these deserts; but from the multitude of holes in the ground, which we saw at the root of almost every plant of Absinthium, we were very certain its companion, the [2] Cerastes, or horned viper, was an inhabitant of that country also.
