Page:H. D. Traill - From Cairo to the Soudan Frontier.djvu/81

Rh levels broken here and there by the low rolling billows of the sandhills and bounded only by the western horizon, and side by side with it along the river-marge that broad bright strip of verdure chequered everywhere with rich brown patches of fresh-sown soil, the priceless gift of Nilus to the children of his banks.

Indescribable in words as is the glow and glare of the desert which, grey on the skyline and yellow in the middle distance, seems in the foreground almost incandescent under the pitiless sunblaze, it is hardly easier to do descriptive justice to the charm and refreshment of its cultivated fringe. A native of our own moist islands would naturally be fastidious, one might think, as a connoisseur of verdure, and would hardly expect to find within a few score miles of the tropics a successful rival of the beauty of an English field in April. Yet never and nowhere, not even in the rainiest spring of rainy Ireland, could you match the deep, cool, glossy green of