DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.11637#0156
AND LOWER EGYPT. 141
which can have no influence on the overflow of
the Nile, are sufficient to render the springs that
furnish this collection of water, more abundant.
When the two lakes separate, and their waters
retire, the soil they had inundated, and which they
have now left uncovered, is loaded with a sediment,
crystallized and hardened by the sun. This is the
natron. The thickness of this layer of salt varies
according as the water has remained a longer or
shorter period on the ground. In places where it
has merely wetted it for a very short time the
natron exhibits only a slight efflorescence, re-
sembling flakes of snow. I have been told, that
at certain periods this substance covers the surface
of the water. Granger says, in his account of
his travels in Egypt, that at the end of August
the salt of the lake was concreted on the surface,
and thick enough for camels to pass over it; but
when I saw it, it was clear and limpid. It is
perhaps the most diuretic of all waters ; a property
for which it is indebted to the saline particles it
contains: and the physician, whose art ceases to
be conjectural only when it is guided by natural
philosophy, will perhaps find in its use simple and
natural means of curing obstructions and infarc-
tions of the viscera, as well as some other diseases
that are pretty common in Egypt
This
which can have no influence on the overflow of
the Nile, are sufficient to render the springs that
furnish this collection of water, more abundant.
When the two lakes separate, and their waters
retire, the soil they had inundated, and which they
have now left uncovered, is loaded with a sediment,
crystallized and hardened by the sun. This is the
natron. The thickness of this layer of salt varies
according as the water has remained a longer or
shorter period on the ground. In places where it
has merely wetted it for a very short time the
natron exhibits only a slight efflorescence, re-
sembling flakes of snow. I have been told, that
at certain periods this substance covers the surface
of the water. Granger says, in his account of
his travels in Egypt, that at the end of August
the salt of the lake was concreted on the surface,
and thick enough for camels to pass over it; but
when I saw it, it was clear and limpid. It is
perhaps the most diuretic of all waters ; a property
for which it is indebted to the saline particles it
contains: and the physician, whose art ceases to
be conjectural only when it is guided by natural
philosophy, will perhaps find in its use simple and
natural means of curing obstructions and infarc-
tions of the viscera, as well as some other diseases
that are pretty common in Egypt
This