[p.460] an hour, the limestone terminated, and the road was covered with
flints, petrosilex, and Egyptian pebbles; here are also found specimens
of petrified wood, the largest about a foot in length. We now travelled
eastward, and after a march of three hours halted upon a part of the
plain, called El Mogawa [Arabic], where we rested during the mid-day
heat. Beyond this spot, to the distance of five hours from Cairo, we met
with great quantities of petrified wood. Large pieces of the trunks of
trees, three or four feet in length, and eight or ten inches in
diameter, lay about the plain, and close to the road was an entire trunk
of a tree at least twenty feet in length, half buried in sand. These
petrifactions are generally found in low grounds, but I saw several also
on the top of the low hills of gravel and sand over which the road lies.
Several travellers have expressed doubts of their being really petrified
wood, and some have crossed the desert without meeting with any of them.
The latter circumstance is easily accounted for; the route we were
travelling is not that usually taken to Suez. I have crossed this desert
repeatedly in other directions, and never saw any of the petrifactions
except in this part of it. As to its really being petrified wood there
cannot be any reason to doubt it, after an inspection of the substance,
in which the texture and fibres of the wood are clearly distinguishable,
and perfectly resemble those of the date tree. I think it not
improbable, that before Nechos dug the canal between the Nile and the
Red sea, the communication between Arsinoe or Clysma and Memphis, may
have been carried on this way; and stations may have been established on
the spots now covered by these petrified trees; the water requisite to
produce and maintain vegetation might have been procured from deep
wells, or from reservoirs of rain water, as is done in the equally
barren desert between Djidda and Mekka. After the completion of the
canal, this route was perhaps neglected, the trees, left without a