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SKETCH IX.

MEDINET-EL-FA YOUM.

Joseph's Canal-Birket Keroun-Cinderella's Slipper-A pretty Pink
Pebble.

MEDINET is the chief city of Fayoum, and its name
is almost always associated with that of the province.

Medinet-el-Fayoum is very important from every point of view commerce, industry, and culture are regulated and administered there by rule and even with a certain official formality. The Viceroy has a residence, and the traffic has something of the tumultuous character of that of Cairo.

The immense Joseph's Canal traverses the whole length of the city, and extends to Lake Birket Keroun, where it attains the proportions of a respectable river. It is so wide for a canal that men of science are not agreed upon its nature, some attributing it merely to the hand of man, and others holding it to be a derivative of the Nile. Whether Joseph had anything to do with the plan of it or not, or whether nature be its sole engineer, it is the principal

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