_I.--The Nile and Egypt_


A long, low, level shore, scarcely rising above the sea, a chain of
vaguely defined and ever-shifting lakes and marshes, then the triangular
plain beyond, whose apex is thrust thirty leagues into the land--this,
the Delta of Egypt, has gradually been acquired from the sea, and is, as
it were, the gift of the Nile. Where the Delta ends, Egypt proper
begins. It is only a strip of vegetable mould stretching north and south
between regions of drought and desolation, a prolonged oasis on the
banks of the river, made by the Nile, and sustained by the Nile. The
whole length of the land is shut in by two ranges of hills, roughly
parallel at a mean distance of about twelve miles.

During the earlier ages the river filled all this intermediate space;
and the sides of the hills, polished, worn, blackened to their very
summits, still bear unmistakable traces of its action. Wasted and
shrunken within the deeps of its own ancient bed, the stream now makes a
way through its own thick deposits of mud. The bulk of its waters keep
to the east, and constitutes the true Nile, the "Great River" of the
hieroglyphic inscriptions. At Khartoum the single channel in which the
river flowed divides, and two other streams are opened up in a southerly
direction, each of them apparently equal in volume to the main stream.

Which is the true Nile? Is it the Blue Nile, which seems to come down
from the distant mountains? Or is it the White Nile, which has traversed
the immense plains of equatorial Africa? The old Egyptians never knew.
The river kept the secret of its source from them as obstinately as it
withheld it from us until a few years ago. Vainly did their victorious