woods, or dells, or gorges, or cascades, or rushing streams, or babbling
rills, meet his gaze on any side; look which way he will, all is
sameness, one vast smooth expanse of rich alluvial soil, varying only in
being cultivated or else allowed to lie waste. Turning his back with
something of weariness on the dull uniformity of this featureless plain,
the wayfarer proceeds southwards, and enters, at the distance of a
hundred miles from the coast, on an entirely new scene. Instead of an
illimitable prospect meeting him on every side, he finds himself in a
comparatively narrow vale, up and down which the eye still commands an
extensive view, but where the prospect on either side is blocked at the
distance of a few miles by rocky ranges of hills, white or yellow or
tawny, sometimes drawing so near as to threaten an obstruction of the
river course, sometimes receding so far as to leave some miles of
cultivable soil on either side of the stream. The rocky ranges, as he
approaches them, have a stern and forbidding aspect. They rise for the
most part, abruptly in bare grandeur; on their craggy sides grows
neither moss nor heather; no trees clothe their steep heights. They seem
intended, like the mountains that enclosed the abode of Rasselas, to
keep in the inhabitants of the vale within their narrow limits, and bar
them out from any commerce or acquaintance with the regions beyond.

Such is the twofold division of the country which impresses the observer
strongly at the first. On a longer sojourn and a more intimate
familiarity, the twofold division gives place to one which is threefold.
The lower differs from the upper valley, it is a sort of debatable
region, half plain, half vale; the cultivable surface spreads itself out
more widely, the enclosing hills recede into the distance; above all,
to the middle tract belongs the open space of the Fayoum nearly fifty
miles across in its greatest diameter, and containing an area of four
hundred square miles. Hence, with some of the occupants of Egypt a