Page:Africa by Élisée Reclus, Volume 1.djvu/96

 edge of the plateau, at dawn pink and hazy cones, like flames of fire dimly seen in the brighter sunshine, at sunset gloomy triangular masses standing out against a brazen sky.

Below Cairo the two ranges of hills, confining the Nile as in a ditch, gradually retire as they merge in the plains, leaving the river to ramify and flow through divergent branches into the Mediterranean. The triangular disposition of this alluvial plain has caused the term delta to be applied to the whole region, and by

analogy to all districts of similar formation, however irregular their contours. Spite of all the changes that have taken place in the local geography since it was first described by Herodotus two thousand five hundred years ago, the Egyptian delta has remained a model of elegance in the harmony of its divergent branches and the indentations of its contours.

At the dawn of history the head of the delta lay more to the south, the bifurcation being situated some four miles below the present suburb of Bulak at Cairo. But the intermediate apex being unprotected by a system of embankments