Page:Mount Seir, Sinai and Western Palestine.djvu/46

22 of less stature and of more recent date bringing up the rear throughout a tract of many miles up the river side. Away towards the north might be seen the plain of the Delta, with its green illimitable fields, and frequent groves of palms. From no other spot, perhaps, can the mind become so fully impressed by the fact that to the Nile, and the Nile alone, does Egypt owe all she has of fertility and wealth. Beyond is the desert of sand, a sea-bed without its animate forms, lifeless and waste. Dean Stanley has well observed, that the Nile, as it glides between the Tombs of the Pharaohs, and the City of the Caliphs, is indeed a boundary between two worlds.

Under the guidance of Dr. Schweinfurth we were able to see the most satisfactory evidence that at a very recent period, and while the shells of the Mediterranean and Red Seas were still unchanged, all the great plain we have been contemplating was submerged to a depth of over 200 feet. At about this level the limestone rock is bored by Pholades, and shells now living in the neighbouring seas are to be found imbedded in sand and gravel which then formed the shores; while the coast-line was defined by the cliffs, which rose some 400 feet above the waters. The sand-beds with large Clypeasters, which occur south of the Pyramids, indicate the position of this sea-bed on the opposite side of the Nile Valley. How great has been the change since then! But long ere the foundations of the Pyramids were laid, the sea had receded to a level perhaps not very different from that at which it stands to-day.

On ascending towards the summit of the ridge we visited several enormous caverns sufficiently large to shelter an army, which occur on both sides of the valley, and at an elevation of about 500 feet above the sea. These caverns are hollowed in the limestone rock, and evidently not by human agency. They afford a suitable retreat for the rock pigeons, which we started from their nests. Dr. Schweinfurth considers these to be ancient sea-caves; and if this be so the land has been still further submerged within a very recent period. On the summit of the plateaux we reached one of the entrenchments of the army of Arabi Pasha; and at a short distance further, towards the east, the British