Page:H. D. Traill - From Cairo to the Soudan Frontier.djvu/221

 And unlike so many other trees which require a strong light to be seen at their best, its beauty is the same at all hours. It is beautiful with all its midday grace of line when other trees have become mere masses of darkening shadow under the gloaming; and it is the first to trace itself against the dawn-grey of the Eastern heaven. The fir itself shows not more nobly when the sunset flames behind its stem; nor is there anywhere so "adorable a dreamer" in the moonlight.

But the Nile has something more wonderful to show than the scenery of its shores—something more beautiful than its majestic palms, and more enduring than even its golden mountains. Never elsewhere is the "incomparable pomp of eve" so gorgeous as in the skies which it reflects, and nowhere does the funeral pageant of the departed day defile with such entrancing and long-drawn splendour as across its waters. The Nile sunsets are famous, and every evening of the