Page:H. D. Traill - From Cairo to the Soudan Frontier.djvu/36

18, which had lasted as long as this, was ever before so effectually healed.

Yet it is interesting to note how many and what persevering attempts have been made throughout all history to re-marry the divorced couple. In such a land of lakes and swamps and branching river arms as the Delta of the Nile it could hardly have been otherwise. Water communication, or the readiest facilities for establishing it, appeared everywhere except in the precise direction in which it was most wanted. Hence, from the time of the Pharaohs down to the Mohammedan conquest the dream of every active and capable Egyptian ruler has been to connect the two seas. The warrior kings of the eighteenth and nineteenth dynasties, the Setis and the Rameseses, laid the foundation of that ancient fresh-water canal system, which was extended by conqueror after conqueror, by Persians and Ptolemies, by Cæsars and Caliphs, and which only finally fell into utter disrepair in the eighth century of the