Page:Mount Seir, Sinai and Western Palestine.djvu/38

16 We crossed two branches of the Nile, each about as wide as the Thames at Kew, the water of which was as usual turgid. The water had fallen to 6 feet below its maximum, which it reached about the middle of October. The origin of the fine sediment which the Nile always carries in suspension, as well as of the rise and fall of the waters themselves, is now fully understood since the publication of Sir S. Baker's remarkable work. Briefly stated, the origin is somewhat as follows:—The Nile below Khartoum consists of one undivided stream; but at El Darner, about 170 geographical miles lower down, it receives the waters of a great tributary, the Atbara, descending from the highlands of Abyssinia. This river undergoes the most extreme transformations. During the early months of the year the waters are so reduced as sometimes to form only a series of great stagnant pools, in which are collected in very close quarters all the aquatic inhabitants, consisting of fishes, crocodiles, and huge tortoises. The banks, through a long line of country at the base of the mountains, are formed of masses of mud and silt, easily undermined, and liable to fall into the waters on the rise of the river. About June tremendous thunderstorms, accompanied by deluges of rain, break on the Abyssinian highlands. The waters of the Atbara rise with extraordinary rapidity, and descend with a roar like that of distant thunder, giving warning of the approaching deluge. Soon the channel is filled up with the flood, the banks of mud are undermined, and fall down in large masses into the waters, where they are speedily broken up and converted into silt, the finer portions of which being carried along finally enter the Nile, and impart to its waters much of the turgid character for which they are known in Lower Egypt. The river now becomes a great fertilising agent, and when allowed to flow over the cultivated fields imparts the necessary moisture; so that, under the influence of a powerful sun, two to three crops can be annually gathered off the land; giving rise to an extraordinary amount of natural wealth. That this sediment originally caused lower Egypt to be reclaimed from the Mediterranean Sea was known to Herodotus, who calls this country “the gift of the Nile.”

Arrived at Cairo one of the first arrangements to be made is for a visit to the Pyramids, always a memorable event in any man's life. After all