Note 375 — Chapter IV · (continued 2)

The Mediterranean front of the Delta may be estimated at one hundred and fifty miles in length. Two cubic miles of earth would more than fill up the lagoons on the coast, and the remaining ten, even allowing the mean depth of the water to be twenty fathoms, which is beyond the truth, would have been sufficient to extend the coast line about three miles farther seaward, and thus, including the land gained by the filling up of the lagoons, to add more than five hundred square miles to the area of Egypt. Nor is this all; for the retardation of the current, by lengthening the course and consequently diminishing the inclination of the channel, would have increased the deposit of suspended matter, and proportionally augmented the total effect of the embankment.