This district was suitable for a nomadic people, who would have been misplaced in the narrow limits of the valley of the Nile. Children of the desert, or at least used as they were to wander freely from one fertile plain to another with their flocks and herds, the sons of Jacob required a spot where the advantages of an advanced civi lization could be united with unrestricted freedom, and abundance be secured without the forfeiture of early and cherished habits. The several opi nions vvhich we have given substantially agree in referring Goshen to the country intervening be tween the desert of Arabia and Palestine on the one side, and the Pelusiac arm of the Nile on the other, with the Mediterranean at the base. The district assigned to Jacob and his family was chosen for its superiority (Gen. xlvii. 6), In the best of the land make thy father and brethren to dwell, in the land of Goshen let them dwell ;' and the sub sequent increase of the Israelites themselves, a?. well as the multiplication of their cattle, shews that the territory was one of extraordinary fertility. Time and circumstances have doubtless had their effect on the fertility of a country in which the de sert is ever ready to make encroachments so soon as the repelling hand of man is relaxed or with drawn. But Laborde (p. 53) represents the vicinity of Heliopolis as still covered with palm trees, and as having an enclosure, comprehendmg a considerable space of ground, which is covered every year by the inundation of the Nile to the height of five feet. We are not, however, to ex
pect evidences of luxuriant fertility. The country was chosen for its pre-eminent fitness for shepherds. If a nomadic tribe had wide space and good pas ture-grounds, they would have 'the best (for themselves) of the land,' and these advantages the district in which we have placed Goshen abun dantly supplied in ancient times, when the waters of the Nile were more liberally dispensed than at present to the eastern side of the country. Nothing is needed but water to make the desert fertile. The water of the Nile soaks through the earth for some distance under the sandy tract (the neigh bourhood of Heliopolis), and is everywhere found on digging wells eighteen or twenty feet deep. Such wells are very frequent in parts which the in undation does not reach. The water is raised from them by wheels turned by oxen, and applied to the irrigation of the fields. Whenever this takes place the desert is tumed into a fruitful field. In passing to Heliopolis we saw several such fields in the different stages of being reclaimed from the desert ; some just laid out, others already fertile. In returning by another way more eastward, we passed a succession of beautiful plantations wholly dependent on this mode of irrigation' (Robinson's Palestine, vol. i. p. 36).—J. R. B.