Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire vol 5 (1897).djvu/479

 OF THE EOMAN EMPIRE 457 and a red sand. The distance from Syene to the sea is a month's journey for an horseman. Along the valley descends a river, on which the blessing of the Most High reposes both in the evening and morning, and which rises and falls with the revolu- tions of the sun and moon. When the annual dispensation of Providence unlocks the springs and fountains that nourish the earth, the Nile rolls his swelling and sounding watei-s through the realm of Egypt ; the fields are overspread by the salutary flood ; and the villages communicate with each other in their painted barks. The retreat of the inundation deposits a fertilis- ing mud for the reception of the various seeds ; the crowds of husbandmen who blacken the land may be compared to a swarm of industrious ants ; and their native indolence is quickened by the lash of the task-master and the promise of the flowers and fruits of a plentiful increase. Their hope is seldom deceived ; but the riches which they extract from the wheat, the barley, and the rice, the legumes, the fruit-trees, and the cattle, are unequally shared between those who labour and those who possess. Ac- cording to the vicissitudes of the seasons, the face of the country is adorned with a silver wave, a verdant emerald, and the deep yellow of a golden harvest." ^*^ Yet this beneficial order is some- times interrupted ; and the long delay and sudden swell of the river in the first year of the conquest might afford some colour to an edifying fable. It is said that the annual sacrifice of a virgin ^^^ had been interdicted by the piety of Omar ; and that the Nile lay sullen and inactive in his shallow bed, till the m.an- date of the caliph was cast into the obedient stream, which rose in a single night to the height of sixteen cubits. The admira- tion of the Arabs for their new conquest encouraged the licence of their romantic spirit. We may read, in the gravest authors, 149 In a twenty years' residence at Cairo, the consul Maillet had contemplated that varying scene, the Nile (lettre ii. particularly p. 70, 75) ; the fertility of the land (lettre ix). From a college at Cambridge, the poetic eye of Gray had seen the same objects with a keener glance : What wonder in the sultry climes that spread, Where Nile, redundant o'er his summer bed, From his broad bosom life and verdure flings, And broods o'er Egypt with his wat'ry wings ; If with advent'rous oar, and ready sail, The dusky people drive before the gale ; Or on frail floats to neighbouring cities ride. That rise and glitter o'er the ambient tide (Mason's Works, and Memoirs of Gray, p. 199, 200). 150 Murtadi, p. 164-167. The reader will not easily credit an human sacrifice under the Christian emperors, or a miracle of the successors of Mahomet.