countries was concentrated the world's earliest history; and although
changed in special importance, they preserve their geographical
significance to the present day.

The power and intelligence of man will have their highest development
within certain latitudes, and the natural passions and characters of
races will be governed by locality and the temperature of climate.

There are certain attractions in localities that induce first
settlements of man; even as peculiar conditions of country attract both
birds and animals. The first want of man and beast is food: thus fertile
soil and abundant pasture, combined with good climate and water
communication, always ensure the settlement of man; while natural
seed-bearing grasses, forests, and prairies attract both birds and
beasts. The earth offers special advantages in various positions to both
man and beast; and such localities are, with few exceptions, naturally
inhabited. From the earliest creation there have been spots so
peculiarly favoured by nature, by geographical position, climate, and
fertility, that man has striven for their occupation, and they have
become scenes of contention for possession. Such countries have had a
powerful influence in the world's history, and such will be the great
pulses of civilization,--the sources from which in a future, however
distant, will flow the civilization of the world. Egypt is the land
whose peculiar capabilities have thus attracted the desires of conquest,
and with whom the world's earliest history is intimately connected.

Egypt has been an extraordinary instance of the actual formation of a
country by alluvial deposit; it has been CREATED by a single river. The
great Sahara, that frightful desert of interminable scorching sand,
stretching from the Red Sea to the Atlantic, is cleft by one solitary