i 9 6 TRAVELS TO DTSC6VER
When the ancient race of the Ptolemies ended, a fcene of war and confufion, and bad government at home, was fucceeded by a worfe under foreigners abroad. The num- ber of its inhabitants was Mill greatly decreafed, and the val- ley I* ad yet a quantity of water enough to fit it for annual culture.
In the reign of the fecond emperor after the Roman con- queft, Petronius Arbiter, a man well known for taite and learning, was governor of Egypt. He faw with regret the decay of the magnificent works of the ancient native Egyptian princes. His fagacity penetrated the ufefulnefs and propriety of thofe works. He faw they had once made Egypt populous and flounihing. Like a good citizen and fubject of the ftate he ferved, and from a humane and ra- tional attachment to that which he governed, he hoped to v make it again as ilouriming under the new government as it had been under the old. Like a man of fenfe, and mailer of his fubject, he laughed at the datlardly fpirit of the modern Egyptians, anxious and trembling left the Nile fhould not overflow land enough to give them bread, when they had the power in their hands to procure plenty in abundance for fix times the number of the people then in Egypt. To fhew them this, he repaired their ancient works, raifed their banks, refitted their fluices, and by thus imprifoning, as I may fay, the inundation at a proper time in the beginning, he over- flowed all Egypt with S peeks of water, as fully, and as ef- fectually, as to the purpofes of agriculture, as before and fince it hath been with i 6 ; and did not open the fluices to allow the water to run and wafle in the defert (where there was now no longer any inhabitants), till the land of the valley of Egypt had been fo well watered as only to need i that
