of which their vessel is not capable) their canja should overset, and then they must all perish.
If Memphis was Metrahenny, I believe most people who had leisure would have tried the voyage from Naucratis by the plain. They would have been carried straight from north to south. But Dr Shaw is exceedingly mistaken, if he thinks there is any way so expeditious as going up the current of the river. As far as I can guess, from ten to four o'clock we seldom went less than eight miles in the hour, against a current that surely ran more than six. This current kept our vessel stiff, whilst the monstrous sail forced us through with a facility not to be imagined.
Dr Shaw, to put Geeza and Memphis perfectly upon a footing, says[1], that there were no traces of the city now to be found, from which he imagines it began to decay soon after the building of Alexandria, that the mounds and ramparts which kept the river from it were in process of time neglected, and that Memphis, which he supposes was in the old bed of the river about the time of the Ptolemies, was so far abandoned, that the Nile at last got in upon it, and overflowing its old ruins, great part of the best of which had been carried first to build the city of Alexandria, that the mud covered the rest, so that no body knew what was its true situation. This is the opinion of Dr Pococke, and likewise of M. de Maillet.
The opinion of these two last-mentioned authors, that the ruins and situation of Memphis are now become obscure,
- ↑ Shaw's Travels, cap. 4.
