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Rh historian Herodotus, in a happy phrase, called the country "the gift of the Nile." Swollen by heavy tropical rains and the melting snows of the mountains about its sources, the Nile begins to rise in its lower parts late in June, and towards the first of October, when the inundation has attained its greatest height, the country presents the appearance of a turbid sea.

By the end of November the river has returned to its bed, leaving the fields covered with a film of rich earth. At the present day the plow is usually run lightly over the soft surface, but in the earliest times the grain was often sown upon the undisturbed deposit, and trampled in by flocks of sheep and goats driven over the fields. In a few weeks after the sowing, the entire land, so recently a flooded plain, is overspread with a sea of verdure, which forms a striking contrast to the desert sands and barren hills that rim the valley.

21. Climate and Products.—In Lower Egypt, near the sea, the rainfall in the winter is abundant; but the climate of Upper Egypt is all but rainless, only a few slight showers, as a rule, falling throughout the year. This dryness of the Egyptian air is what has preserved through so many thousand years, in such wonderful freshness of color and with such sharpness of outline, the numerous paintings and sculptures of the monuments of the country.