1. POLITICAL HISTORY.

EGYPT AND THE NILE.--Egypt comprises the delta of the Nile and the flood-
plains of its lower course. The whole land is formed of the deposits of
the river; hence Herodotus, in happy phrase, called the country "the gift
of the Nile." The delta country was known to the ancients as Lower Egypt;
while the valley proper, reaching from the head of the delta to the First
Cataract, a distance of six hundred miles, was called Upper Egypt.
[Footnote: About seven hundred miles from the Mediterranean a low ledge of
rocks, stretching across the Nile, forms the first obstruction to
navigation in passing up the river. The rapids found at this point are
termed the First Cataract. Six other cataracts occur in the next seven
hundred miles of the river's course.]

Through the same means by which Egypt was originally created, is the land
each year still renewed and fertilized. The Nile, swollen by the heavy
tropical rains about its sources, begins to rise in its lower parts late
in June, and by October, when the inundation has attained its greatest
height, the country presents the appearance of an inland sea.

By the end of November the river has returned to its bed, and the fields,
over which has been spread a film of rich earth, [Footnote: The rate of
the fluviatile deposit is from three to five inches in a century. The
surface of the valley at Thebes, as shown by the accumulations about the
monuments, has been raised seven feet during the last seventeen hundred
years.] present the appearance of black mud-flats. Usually the plow is run
lightly over the soft surface, but in some cases the grain is sown upon
the undisturbed deposit, and simply trampled in by flocks of sheep and
goats driven over it. In a few weeks the entire land, so recently a
flooded plain, is overspread with a sea of verdure, which forms a striking