Page:H. D. Traill - From Cairo to the Soudan Frontier.djvu/220

 others so like, yet so unlike it—is an example ready to hand. On the narrow spit of land that thrusts itself lance-like into the broad bosom of the waters stands a little group of palms, the guardians of a tiny Arab village. Shorewise from their roots runs a long narrow strip of intensely vivid green. Inland, for miles behind it, the "lone and level sands stretch far away," their dusty yellow melting gradually at the horizon into the pearl-grey of the morning sky. In midstream a single lateen-sail hovers over the glassy surface of the river, like some huge water-fowl, motionless, blinding white. There is nothing more; it is the very slightest of impressionist sketches, dashed off as it were in half a dozen strokes of Natures most careless brush; but it is perfect with a perfection of its own, and is of the kind which lives long in the memory of the eye. In every such delightful vignette of river scenery—and at every turn of the Nile there is a fresh one—the palm is the dominant feature.