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What they said of their country seemed to me very reasonable. For any
one who sees Egypt, without having heard a word about it before, must
perceive, if he has only common powers of observation, that the Egypt
to which the Greeks go in their ships is an acquired country, the gift
of the river. The same is true of the land above the lake, to the
distance of three days' voyage, concerning which the Egyptians say
nothing, but which exactly the same kind of country.
The following is the general character of the region. In the first
place, on approaching it by sea, when you are still a day's sail from
the land, if you let down a sounding-line you will bring up mud, and
find yourself in eleven fathoms' water, which shows that the soil
washed down by the stream extends to that distance.
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