Page:McCosh, John - Advice to Officers in India (1856).djvu/320

 most picturesque variety, all full of activity and energy, eager in the pursuit of gain. The climate of Cairo is cool compared with its latitude,and the temperature even of March, sharp and bracing, with a cloudless sky.

The atmosphere is parched and dry, with intense glare, and intolerable dust and sand, irritating the eyes, the nostrils, and the lungs, and keeping up all the feelings of catarrh, therefore, to those suffering from any affection of the air passages or ayes, it is most unfavourable. It does not appear to me that a voyage up the Nile has any commensurate advantages; the progress is slow and difficult: the scenery, with a very few exceptions, such as Thebes and Phyle uninteresting: the desert is seen on either hand, always near enough to annoy with its sand. Indeed Egypt is merely a green streak in a boundless desert—the bed of the Nile.

A visit to the Pyramids is a sight never to be forgotten; for with all the war of elements, the tear and wear of time, and the covetousness and destruction of man, they will live while the world lives, the loftiest and the most stupendous monuments of man's creation. The valley of the Nile will remind one of the valley of the Ganges; abounding with the most luxurious crops of wheat, and barley, and oats, studded with numberless villages, and teeming with population and animal life of