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.