Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography Volume II.djvu/447

 NILUS. The river nearly resembles in its natural features and the cultivation of its banks the acknowled£;ed Nile below the junction lower down. The current is swift and regular: the banks are firm and well defined : populous villages stand in the midst of clumps of date-trees or fields of millet (dhoitrrci), and both the land and the water attest the activity of human enterprise. A difterence corresponding to these features is observable also in the respective currents of these rivers. The White Eiver moves sluggishly along, without rapids or cataracts: the Blue River runs strongly at all seasons, and after the periodical rains with the force and speed of a torrent. The diver- iity is seen also on the arrival of their waters at the point of junction. Although the 'White Kiver is fed by early rains near the equator, its floods ordi- narily reach Khartum three weeks later than those of the Blue Eiver. And at their place of meeting the superior strength of the latter is apparent. For while the stronger flood discharges itself through a broad channel, fiee from bars and shoals, the White River is contracted at its mouth, and the more rapid current of its rival has thrown up a line of sand across its influx. Actual measurement, too, has proved the breadth of the Blue Eiver at the point of junction to be 768 yards, while that of the AVhite is only 483, and the body of water poured down by the former is double of that discharged by the latter. From all these circumstances it is pro- bable that to the Bahr-el-Azreh rather than to the Bahr-el-Ahiad belongs the name of the " true Kile;" and this supposition accords with an ancient tradition among the people oi Sennaar who hold the Blue Eiver in peculiar veneration as the " Father of the Waters that run into the Great Sea." The knowledge possessed by the ancients of the tipper portions and tributaries of the Nile was not altogether in a direct proportion to the date of their intercourse with those regions. Indeed, the earlier track of commerce was more favourable to acquaint- ance with the interior than were its later channels. The overland route declined after the Ptolemies transferred the trade from the rivers and the roads across the desert to Axume, Adulis, Berenice, and the ports of the Eed Sea. Eratosthenes and other geo- graphers, who wrote while Aethiupia still flourished, liad thus better means of information than their suc- cessors in Roman times, Strabo, Ptolemy, &c. Dio- dorus (i. 30), for example, says that a voyage up the Nile to Meroe was a costly and hazardous under- taking; and Nero's explorers (Plin. v. 9. s. 10; Senec. N. Q. vi. 8) seem to have found in that once popu- lous and fertile kingdom only solitude and decay. At the close of the tiiird century A. d. the Romans abandoned every station on the Nile above Philae, !is not worth the cost and care of defence, — a proof that the river-trafBc, beyond Aegypt, must have dwindled away. As the trade with Arabia and Taprobane (^Ceylon) by sea developed itself, that with Libya would become of less importance; and in pro- portion as the Eed Sea was better known, the branches and sources of the Nile were obscured. (2.) The Nile heloio the jwint of junction. — The two streams flow in a common bed for several miles N. of Khartum, without, however, blending their waters. The Bahr-Ahlad retains its white soapy hue, both in the dry season and during the inun- dations, while the Bahr-Azreh is distinguished by its dark colour. For 12 or 15 miles below the point of junction the Nile traverses a narrow and gloomy NILUS. 431 defile, until it emerges among the immense plains of herbage in the mesopotamian district of Meroe. Beyond Meroe, already described [Meroe], the Nile receives its List considerable affluent, the Asta- boras or Tacazze ; the only other accessions to its stream in its course northward being the torrents or wadys that, in the rainy season, descend from the Arabian hills. From the N. of Meroe to Syene, a distance of about 700 miles, the river enters upon the region of Cataracts, concerning which the ancients invented or credited so many marvels. (Cic. Soiiin. Scij}. 5; Senec. N. Q. iv. 2.) These rapids are seven in immber, and are simply dams or weirs of granite or porphyry rising through the sandstone,. and, being little afiected by the attrition of the water, resist its action, divide its stream, and render its fall per mile double of the average fall below Philae. So far, liowever, from the river descending lofty precipices with a deafening noise, even the steepest of the rapids may be shot, though not without some dan- ger, at high water; and at the great Cataract the entire descent in a space of 5 miles is only 80 feet. [Philae.] Licreased by the stream of the Asta- boras, the Nile, from lat. 17° 45' N., flows in a northerly direction for 120 miles, through the land of the Berbers. Then comes its great SW. elbow or bend, commencing at the rocky island of Mogreb (lat. 19° N.), and continuing neariy to the most northern point of Meroe. During this lateral deflection the Nile is bounded W. by the desert of Bahiauda, the region of the an- cient Nubae, and E. by the Arabian Desert, in- habited, or rather traversed, by the nomade Blem- niyes and Megabari. [Mackobii.] Throughout this portion of its course the navigation of the river is greatly impeded by rapids, so that the caravans leave its banks, and regain them by a road crossing the eastern desert at Derr or Syene, between the first and second Cataracts. No monuments connect this region with either ileroe or Aegypt. It must always, indeed, have been thinly peopled, since the only cultivable soil consists of strips or patches of land extending about 2 miles at furthest beyond either bank of the Nile. AVhile skirting or intersecting the kingdom of Meroe, the river flowed by city and necropolis, which, according to some writers, imparted their forms and civilisation to Aegypt, according to others derived both art and polity from it. The desert of Bahiauda severs the chain of monuments, which, however, is resumed below the fourth Cata- ract at Nonri, Gehel-el-Birkel, and Merawe. (Lat. 20° N.) Of thirty-five pyi-amids at Kouri, on the left bank of the river, about half are in good preservation ; but the purpose which they sen-ed is uncertain, since no ruins of any cities point to them as a necropolis, and they are without sculptures or hieroglyphics. On the western side of Gehel-el-Birkel, about 8 miles lower down, and on the right bank, are found not only pyramids, but also the remains of several temples and the ves- tiges of a city, probably Napata, the capital of Can- dace, the Aethiopian queen. [Napata.] (Cail- liaud, V Isle de Meroe, vol. iii. p. 197; Hoskins, Travels, p. 13G— 141.) About the 18th degree of N. latitude the Nile resumes its northerly direc- tion, which it observes generally until it ajiproaches the second Cataract. In resuming its direct course to N., it enters the kingdom of Domjola, and most of the features which marked its channel through the