Page:Africa by Élisée Reclus, Volume 1.djvu/86

 cultivated. Farther north the right bank is skirted by a chaos of extinct volcanoes forming a continuation to the rocks of the cataract. Cones, craters, rugged crags, mounds of indurated ashes, hillocks of lava, stand out with their thousand varied forms against the horizon of the Libyan desert.

The "first" cataract, that of Asuan, is neither so long nor so uniform as that of Wadi-Halfa, nor does it present the same desolate appearance, but it none the less deserves the name bequeathed to us by the ancients. It also consists of a series of rapids endlessly ramifying amid the granite rocks of divers forms and colours, mostly destitute of vegetation, but offering here and there grand or charming pictures with their piled up rocks amid the foaming waters, and their picturesque groups of palms, tamarinds, or thickets festooned with lianas. The approaches of the cataract are guarded above by the island of Philae, at once a temple and a garden; and below by Elephantine, the "Island of Flowers," whose beauties are mirrored in the waters of the stream. Their historical memories and associations also contribute to render the sight of these rapids one of those spectacles that challenge the attention of the observer in the highest degree, and that leave an indelible impression on the memory. Here is the "gate" of Egypt; here, since the commencement of recorded history, we trace, as it were, a visible boundary between two worlds. By a remarkable coincidence this boundary is almost indicated by the Tropic of Cancer, for it was close to Asuan that for the first time astronomers saw, at the summer solstice, the sundials deprived of their shadow and the wells pierced to the bottom by the solar rays. Another world began for them beyond this ideal line; it seemed to them as if in the torrid everything must contrast with the phenomena of the temperate zone. Even at the present day we are easily led to exaggerate all the local differences between the regions stretching on either side of the cataract and the populations inhabiting them.

At high water the navigation is not arrested along this so-called cataract. Boatmen pass with safety up and down; but at low water the passage either way on the thousand arms of "Neptune's vast staircase" is only to be accomplished by the aid of the "chellala," or "men of the cataract," who tow or check the boats by means of hawsers. About fifty large dhahahiyé, engaged by the tourists, yearly brave the dangers of the falls, and thanks to the experienced pilots employed, accidents are rare. The skill of the boatmen in descending the cataracts displays itself in keeping the boat on the central crest formed by the stream, at times rising six or even more feet above the main body of water skirting the rocks; from the top of this moving hill the pilot commands the foaming rapids. The moment the boat swerves right or left from the crest of the wave the danger begins; if the sailors are unable to redirect it into the current by oar or rudder, it is inevitably dragged into the eddies at the sides and exposed to the rocks, compared by the Arabs to monsters who "bite" it to pieces as it is borne along.

At the sight of these rapids it may be asked, while allowing for the poetical exaggeration of the ancient descriptions, whether the obstructing reefs were not much higher two thousand years ago, and whether the Nile did not at that period form a veritable fall. In fact, it is probable that the river then fell in a cascade