the south of Cosseir, and named it Berenice after his mother.  He also built four public inns, or watering-houses, where the caravans might find water for the camels, and shelter from the noonday sun, on their twelve days’ journey through the desert from Koptos on the Nile to this new port.  He rebuilt, and at the same time renamed, the old port of Cosseir, or AEnnum as it was before called, and named it Philotera after his younger sister.  The trade which thus passed down the Nile from Syene, from Berenice, and from Philotera, paid a toll or duty at the custom-house station of Phylake a little below Lycopolis on the west bank of the river, where a guard of soldiers was encamped; and this station gradually grew into a town.

[Illustration:  112.jpg ROSETTA BRANCH OF THE NILE]

Philadelphus also built a city on the sands at the head of the Red Sea, near where Suez now stands, and named it Arsinoe, after his sister; and he again opened the canal which Necho II. and Darius had begun, by which ships were to pass from the Nile to this city on the Red Sea.  This canal began in the Pelusiac branch of the river, a little above Bubastis, and was carried to the Lower Bitter Lakes in the reign of Darius.  From thence Philadelphus wished to carry it forward to the Red Sea, near the town of Arsinoe, and moreover cleared it from the sands which soon overwhelmed it and choked it up whenever it was neglected by the government.  But his undertaking was stopped by the engineers finding the waters of the canal several feet lower than the level of the Red Sea; and that, if finished, it would become a salt-water canal, which could neither water the fields nor give drink to the cities in the valley.  He also built a second city of the name of Berenice, called the Berenice Epidires, at the very mouth of the Red Sea on a point of land where Abyssinia is hardly more than fifteen miles from the opposite coast of Arabia.  This naming of cities after his mother and sisters was no idle compliment; they probably received the crown revenues of those cities for their personal maintenance.

With a view further to increase the trade with the East, Philadelphus sent Dionysius on an expedition overland to India, to gain a knowledge of the country and of its means and wants.  He went by the way of the Caspian Sea through Bactria, in the line of Alexander’s march.  He dwelt there, at the court of the sovereign, soon after the time that Megasthenes was there; and he wrote a report of what he saw and learned.  But it is sad to find, in our search for what is valuable in the history of past times, that the information gained on this interesting journey of discovery is wholly lost.