Moreover There Are
Other Rivers Also, Not In Size At All Equal To The Nile, Which Have
Performed Great Feats;
Of which I can mention the names of several,
and especially the Acheloos, which flowing through Acarnania and so
issuing
Out into the sea has already made half of the Echinades from
islands into mainland. Now there is in the land of Arabia, not far
from Egypt, a gulf of the sea running in from that which is called the
Erythraian Sea, very long and narrow, as I am about to tell. With
respect to the length of the voyage along it, one who set out from the
innermost point to sail out through it into the open sea, would spend
forty days upon the voyage, using oars; and with respect to breadth,
where the gulf is broadest it is half a day's sail across: and there
is in it an ebb and flow of tide every day. Just such another gulf I
suppose that Egypt was, and that the one ran in towards Ethiopia from
the Northern Sea, and the other, the Arabian, of which I am about to
speak, tended from the South towards Syria, the gulfs boring in so as
almost to meet at their extreme points, and passing by one another
with but a small space left between. If then the stream of the Nile
should turn aside into this Arabian gulf, what would hinder that gulf
from being filled up with silt as the river continued to flow, at all
events within a period of twenty thousand years?
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