DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.11637#0154
AND LOWER EGYPT. 139
which the flamingo* rises eminent for the splen-
dour of its plumage; display a smiling picture of
nature in this spot, while every thing around
exhibits only symptoms of her death.
It is impossible to determine the extent of the
lakes in which the natron is formed, as it varies
according to the seasons. In that season when
water is most abundant, the two lakes are united
in one, of much greater length than breadth, and
occupying a space of several leagues : at other
periods they are nothing more than ponds of no
great extent.
If Pliny, when he wrote, that the Nile acts on
the brine-pools of Nitria as the sea does on those
of salt, meant, that the inundation of the river
extended as far as the lakes, he was palpably
mistaken, as Pere Siccard has remarked -}-. But
if it were merely his intention to give us to
understand that there is a kind of conformity
between the Nile and these lakes, he has only
noted a singular yet certain fact, with which the
missionary was unacquainted ; a fact, which the
people of the country have observed, and errone-
ously ascribed to a communication between the
* Flamant, ou phenicoptere. Buffon, Hist. Nat. des Ois. et
pi. enlum. No. bi.—Phccnicoptrrus ruber. Lin.
f Mcmoires des Missions du Levant, vol. vii. p. 61.
Nile
which the flamingo* rises eminent for the splen-
dour of its plumage; display a smiling picture of
nature in this spot, while every thing around
exhibits only symptoms of her death.
It is impossible to determine the extent of the
lakes in which the natron is formed, as it varies
according to the seasons. In that season when
water is most abundant, the two lakes are united
in one, of much greater length than breadth, and
occupying a space of several leagues : at other
periods they are nothing more than ponds of no
great extent.
If Pliny, when he wrote, that the Nile acts on
the brine-pools of Nitria as the sea does on those
of salt, meant, that the inundation of the river
extended as far as the lakes, he was palpably
mistaken, as Pere Siccard has remarked -}-. But
if it were merely his intention to give us to
understand that there is a kind of conformity
between the Nile and these lakes, he has only
noted a singular yet certain fact, with which the
missionary was unacquainted ; a fact, which the
people of the country have observed, and errone-
ously ascribed to a communication between the
* Flamant, ou phenicoptere. Buffon, Hist. Nat. des Ois. et
pi. enlum. No. bi.—Phccnicoptrrus ruber. Lin.
f Mcmoires des Missions du Levant, vol. vii. p. 61.
Nile