States--witness Athens, Sparta, Rhodes, Genoa, Florence, Venice. Egypt
is the richest and most productive land in the whole world. In its most
flourishing age we are told that it contained twenty thousand cities. It
deserved to be called, more (probably) than even Belgium, "one great
town." But its area was undoubtedly small. Still, as little men have
often taken the highest rank among warriors, so little States have
filled a most important place in the world's history. Palestine was
about the size of Wales; the entire Peloponnese was no larger than New
Hampshire; Attica had nearly the same area as Cornwall. Thus the case of
Egypt does not stand by itself, but is merely one out of many exceptions
to what may perhaps be called the general rule.

If stinted for space, Egypt was happy in her soil and in her situation.
The rich alluvium, continually growing deeper and deeper, and
top-dressed each year by nature's bountiful hand, was of an
inexhaustible fertility, and bore readily year after year a threefold
harvest--first a grain crop, and then two crops of grasses or esculent
vegetables. The wheat sown returned a hundredfold to the husbandman, and
was gathered at harvest-time in prodigal abundance--"as the sand of the
sea, very much,"--till men "left numbering" (Gen. xli. 49). Flax and
doora were largely cultivated, and enormous quantities were produced of
the most nutritive vegetables, such as lentils, garlic, leeks, onions,
endive, radishes, melons, cucumbers, lettuces, and the like, which
formed a most important element in the food of the people. The vine was
also grown in many places, as along the flanks of the hills between
Thebes and Memphis, in the basin of the Fayoum, at Anthylla in the
Mareotis at Sebennytus (now Semnood), and at Plisthiné, on the shore of
the Mediterranean. The date-palm, springing naturally from the soil in
clumps, or groves, or planted in avenues, everywhere offered its golden
clusters to the wayfarer, dropping its fruit into his lap. Wheat,