Page:Africa by Élisée Reclus, Volume 1.djvu/57





ESCENDING from the south to the north, and in its lower course traversing broad open plains, the Nile gives, as it were, a general inclination to the whole of North-East Africa towards the Mediterranean basin. Notwithstanding a difference of outline, its delta corresponds to another opening at once maritime and fluvial, that of the Dardanelles and Bosphorus, through which the regions watered by the streams of East Europe also slope towards the Mediterranean. Thus like an inner within an outer circle, there is developed in the centre of the Old World a zone of riverain lands, forming, so to say, a little world apart, and comprising such famous historical cities as Memphis, Alexandria, Jerusalem, Tyre, Antioch, Ephesus, Miletus, Smyrna, Athens, and Constantinople.

In the length of its course the Nile is one of the great rivers of the world, and by many of the tribes along its banks the earth is supposed to be divided into two parts by this mysterious stream, coiled like a snake round the globe and grasping its tail in its mouth. It certainly exceeds all the other rivers of the eastern hemisphere, not excepting the Yangtze-Kiang or the three great Siberian arteries. In this respect it even surpasses the Amazon itself, and probably yields to the Missouri-Mississippi alone. Yet the chief river falling into the Victoria Nyanza, and thus forming the true upper course of the Nile, has not yet been determined with absolute certainty. It may even be larger than has been supposed, so that calculating from its farthest source south of the equator, the African river may possibly be superior in length to its North American rival. But taking it from the Nyanza alone, it is at least 3,750 miles long, and in a straight line along the meridian from lake to sea the distance is thirty-one and a half degrees of latitude, or about 2,100 miles. But to reach the farthest headstreams of the Nile basin we