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, if any, of the earth's chief waterways have aroused such universal and sustained interest as has that great stream which, rising at the equator, flows due north, through thirty-one degrees of latitude, to the Mediterranean. Almost from the dawn of history, the Nile has formed the basis of endless conjecture, and the subject of many a myth. The earliest writers vied one with another in relating legends regarding its sources, the dwellers on its banks, and the countries through which it passed.

This is easy to understand. Those pioneers of civilization who settled in its northern valley, and who, by the help of its beneficent waters, converted the desert into an area unrivalled for its agricultural prosperity—thus amassing the wealth which enabled them to form a mighty Empire—were aware that this river had its beginning in a land far away to the south, barred to

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