o twenty broad. It is shaped much like a fish's tail. The two arms
are connected by a strait seven or eight miles in width, which joins
them near their northern extremities. The water of the lake, though
not salt, is black and has a bad taste. Fish support life in it with
difficulty, and never grow to any great size. The lake is shallow, not
much exceeding a depth of three or four feet. It contracts greatly in
the summer, at which time the strait connecting the two arms is often
absolutely dry. The edges of the lake are clothed with tamarisk and
other trees; and where the rivers enter it, sometimes by several
branches, the soil is rich and cultivation productive; but elsewhere the
sand of the desert creeps up almost to the margin of the water, clothed
only with some sickly grass and a few scattered shrubs.

The Birket-el-Keroun, or Lake Moaris of the classical writers, is a
natural basin--not, as Herodotus imagined, an artificial one--situated
on the western side of the Nile valley, in a curious depression which
nature has made among the Libyan hills. This depression--the modern
district of the Faioom--is a circular plain, which sinks gradually
towards the north-west, descending till it is more than 100 feet below
the surface of the Nile at low water. The Northern and northwestern
portion of the depression is occupied by the lake, a sheet of brackish
water shaped like a horn (whence the modern name) measuring about
thirty-five or thirty-six miles from end to end, and attaining in the
middle a width of between five and six miles. The area of the lake is
estimated roughly at 150 square miles, its circumference at about ninety
miles. It has a depth varying from twelve to twenty-four feet. Though
the water is somewhat brackish, yet the Birket contains several species
of fresh-water fish; and in ancient times its fisheries are said to have
been exceedingly productive.

The principal cities of the Empire were, besides Pesargadae and
Persepolis, Susa--the chief city of Susiana--which became the capital;
Babylon, Ecbatana, Rhages, Zadracarta, Bactra (now Balkh), Maracanda
(now Samarcand), Aria, or Artacoana (Herat), Caspatyrus on the Upper
Indus,Taxila (Attock?), Pura (perhaps Bunpoor), Carmana (Kerman),
Arbela, Nisibis, Amida (now Diarbekr); Mazaca in Cappadocia; Trapezus
(Trebizond), Sinope, Dascyleium, Sardis, Ephesus, Miletus, Gordium,
Perga, and Tarsus in Asia Minor: Damascus, Jerusalem, Sidon, Tyre,
Azotus or Ashdod, and