After making this circuit along the cliffs it was decided that the plane should explore a part of the road from Aqaba to Ma'an indicated on the maps, to see the general nature of the pass through the sheer cliffs to the east of Aqaba which had seemed so difficult on the May 18 flight. Unless a pass could be found elsewhere beyond the boundaries of the contour maps available, this might be the only pass into Aqaba from the east. The airplanefollowed the Ma'an road for about 5 kilometers, its nature being clearly indicated in Fig. 1. It was judged that the road to occasionally washedout by flash floods, a supposition later confirmed by Chandler, Returning to the Wadi Araba, the airplane followed it northward the party scanned the west edge of this Wadi carefully for any evidence of a pass leading toward Gaza. No satisfactory pass was found, even though the flight was finally continued to the Dead Sea, and as a matter of fact the "roads" indicated on the maps were not visible on the ground. Between the Dead Sea and Beersheba, the country was again very rough, but the photographs taken add little to the general view given in Fig. 59. The flight followed the coast line of the Mediterranean to the Bay of Pelusium, circled Port Said (Fig. 62) and Port Fuad and followed the Suez Canal to Lake Timsah. (Fig. 64)

Fig. 62 Port Said

The character of the country near and along the Canal was apparently represented with nearly photographic accuracy (as far as the scale permitted) on the 1:500,OOO scale map of Egypt as published by the survey of Egypt in 1942, and the 1:100,000 map of the canal. It appeared that any pipe line along the Canal would have to be supported on trestle work for at least 20 kilometers if the termination was to be in Port Fuad. An alternative would be to build to the Bay of Pelusium 35 kilometers east of Port Fuad. This route would traverse dry land, but long submarine loading lines would be required across the shallow water of the Bay, (Note: This preliminary conclusion regarding the Said or Fuad route was subsequently somewhat altered, when Wolfe and Chandler covered the country on the ground. They have reported, that a pipe line could be laid along the road west