Page:Africa by Élisée Reclus, Volume 1.djvu/392

 814 NORTH-EAST AFEICA. Egypt is officially said to possess a superficial area of 400,000 square miles, omitting the Asiatic possessions beyond the Suez Canal, .but including all the Nilotic region between Assuan and Wady-Halfa. The population of 6,800,000, according to the census of 1882, would be very small in proportion to this immense space, much less, in fact, comparatively speaking, than that of Scandinavia. But the inhabitable part of Egypt, resembling in shape a triangular kite with a long sinuous tail, is scarcely 12,000 square miles in extent, which gives the country a density of population three times greater than that of France, and even superior to that of Belgium and Saxony. Egypt is the Nile, and its very name is that by which the river was formerly known. The most ancient name of the country, that of Kem, or Kemi, that is to say, *• Black," also comes indirectly from the Nile, because it was derived from the violet tint of the alluvia deposited by the current, forming a contrast with the " red " sands and rocks of the desert. The term Kam, or Kham, applied to the African peoples in Genesis, is probably nothing more than the name of Egypt itself. From this black soil, composed of fluvial deposits, spring forth the nutritive plants ; whilst, according to an ancient legend, man himself issued from it. All the towns and villages of Egypt are disposed along the banks of the river and its canals, depending for their existence on its life-giving waters. Communications between Upper and Lower Egypt could recently be effected only by the Nile, which is* easily navigable, since boats ascend and descend with equal facility, either driven up stream by the north wind, or else drift down with the current. Shipwrecks or prolonged stoppages are likely to occur more especially at abrupt turnings, and on navigating the ravines, whence irregular winds sweep across the course of the stream. The Arabian or Coast Range. Here and there, from Assuan to Cairo, the banks of the Nile are commanded either by the slopes of mountains, or by the edges of plateaux, whose height ranges from 300 to 2,300 feet. From these heights a whole section of Egypt lies at the feet of the traveller, from the eastern to the western frontier, with all its villages, canals and cultivated lands. Lower down the yellow walls of the rocks in many places bear the aspect of quarries, whose cleared spaces are now laid out in garden-plots. It is especially towards the east that the cliffs here and there assume an imposing appearance, although nowhere rising to any great elevation. The traveller must penetrate some distance from the Nile to the neighbourhood of the Red Sea before he reaches the coast range or border chain, which, however, has been very imperfectly explored. It forms a northerly continuation of the Etbai range, some of whose peaks are said to attain a height of considerably over 6,000 feet. These highlands of the Arabian desert, commonly spoken oj^ simply as El-Jebel, or " The Mountain," consist of crystalline rocks, such as granite, gneiss, mica schist, porphyry, and diorite. They are disposed in several distinct groups, separated from each other by the ramifications of sandy wadies. One of these