soar with the wings of an eagle into the air, and look down upon the
scene, so as to observe the operation of that grand and yet simple
process by which this long and wonderful valley, teeming so profusely
with animal and vegetable life, has been formed, and is annually
revivified and renewed, in the midst of surrounding wastes of silence,
desolation, and death, we should gaze upon it with never-ceasing
admiration and pleasure. We have not the wings of the eagle, but the
generalizations of science furnish us with a sort of substitute for
them.

The long series of patient, careful, and sagacious observations, which
have been continued now for two thousand years, bring us results, by
means of which, through our powers of mental conception, we may take a
comprehensive survey of the whole scene, analogous, in some respects, to
that which direct and actual vision would afford us, if we could look
down upon it from the eagle's point of view. It is, however, somewhat
humiliating to our pride of intellect to reflect that long-continued
philosophical investigations and learned scientific research are, in
such a case as this, after all, in some sense, only a sort of substitute
for wings. A human mind connected with a pair of eagle's wings would
have solved the mystery of Egypt in a week; whereas science, philosophy,
and research, confined to the surface of the ground, have been occupied
for twenty centuries in accomplishing the undertaking.

It is found at last that both the existence of Egypt itself, and its
strange insulation in the midst of boundless tracts of dry and barren
sand, depend upon certain remarkable results of the general laws of
rain. The water which is taken up by the atmosphere from the surface of
the sea and of the land by evaporation, falls again, under certain
circumstances, in showers of rain, the frequency and copiousness of