Nidaros

“ The horn is very conspicuous on the heads of men in the Nineveh (Asshur) sculptures, still, as a fashion, retained in Ethiopia (Cush, Abyssinia [4] ) , the origin of the Chaldeans, through Nimrod the Cushite (Gen. x. 8.) , who probably derived their chief sustenance from the river Tigris (Hiddekel) . Subsistence from (1) fishing, (2) hunting (e.g. Nimrod) , (3) grazing, and (4) agriculture, seems to have succeeded in the order named. The repeated appearance of fish on the same sculptures, is in allusion, doubtless, to the name Nineveh (= fish + habitation) ”

“ The avowed object of the Nil Durpan was to describe certain states of society. Was it nothing with such an avowed object to represent, under the fictitious names of Wood and Rose, the whole body of planters? The story of the book commenced with the picture of a once happy valley,—happy in the production of rice, grain, pulse, seeds, oil, and fish. The women, simple-minded and happy in their allegiance to their husbands; the ryots happy; no evil to complain of; the ryots' daughters virtuous and therefore happy. But alas, a change came over the spirit of their dream; the Indigo monster arrives. ”

“ Herodotus says, that the Nile is such in its own nature, as it seems to be in the time of its increase; for that in winter, when the sun moves to the south, and runs its daily course directly over Africa, it exhales so much water out of the Nile, that it decreases against nature; and in summer, when the sun returns to the north, the rivers of Greece, and the rivers of all other northern countries, fall and decrease; and therefore, that it is not so strange for the Nile about summer time to increase, and in winter to fall and grow lower. ”

“ At three o’clock in the afternoon we arrived at Girgé, the largest town we had seen since we left Cairo; which, by the latitude Ptolemy has very rightly placed it in, should be the Diospolis Parva, and not Gawa, as Mr Norden makes it. For this we know is the beginning of the Diospolitan nome, and is near a remarkable crook of the Nile, as it should be. It is also on the western side of the river, as Diospolis was, and at a proper distance from Dendera, the ancient Tentyra, a mark which cannot be mistaken.
The Nile makes a kind of loop here; is very broad, and the current strong. ”

“ There is no grain called Dara, at least that I know of. If he meant millet, he should have called it Dora. It is not a mark of barrenness in the ground where this grows: part of the finest land in Egypt is sown with it. The banks of the Nile which produce Dora would also produce wheat; but the inhabitants of the desert like this better; it goes farther, and does not subject them to the violent labour of the plough, to which all inhabitants of extreme hot countries are averse. ”

“ For if the overflowing of the Nile should proceed from Egypt itself, it could not flow above the land of Egypt, where it passes through rock and mountainous places. For, as it takes its course through Ethiopia for above the space of six thousand furlongs, it is at its full height before ever it reach Egypt; and therefore, if the river Nile lie lower than the caverns of congested earth, those clefts and hollow places must be above, towards the superficies of the earth, in which it is impossible so much water should be contained. ”

“ The iron-like sterility of the granite rocks, naked except in spots where the wind has sheeted them with sand; the groves of palms springing unexpectedly into view in this desert wilderness, as a sudden bend of the river discovers a village; the ever blue and never clouded sky above, and, the only blessing of this blighted land, the Nile, silently flowing between its stern walls of rocks towards the distant land of Lower Egypt, form a total that produces a scene to be met with nowhere but upon the Nile. ”

“ There can be no hope of success until the slave trade shall have ceased to exist.
The journey is long, the countries savage; there are no ancient histories to charm the present with memories of the past; all is wild and brutal, hard and unfeeling, devoid of that holy instinct instilled by nature into the heart of man—the belief in a Supreme Being. In that remote wilderness in Central Equatorial Africa are the Sources of the Nile. ”

“ It seems to me as if I sprang from good father Niger himself, from the wondrous fertility of his waters. He is gentle but immense, rolling countless waves like the sea, and so broad, so vast, that no bridge can span him as he flows from horizon to horizon. He carries archipelagoes on his breast, and stretches out arms covered with herbage like pasture land. And there are the depths where flotillas of huge fishes roam at their ease. Father Niger has his tempests, too, and his days of fire, when his waters beget life in the burning clasp of the sun. ”

“ Then followed the researches of Van der Decken, Thornton, and others; and last of all the grand discovery of the main source of the Nile, which every Englishman must feel an honest pride in knowing was accomplished by our gallant countrymen, Speke and Grant. The fabulous torrid zone, of parched and burning sand, was now proved to be a well-watered region resembling North America in its fresh-water lakes, and India in its hot humid lowlands, jungles, ghauts, and cool highland plains. ”

“ The great river flowing from west to east, whose crocodiles showed it to be the Nile, must have been the Niger. The ancients knew middle Ethiopia to be a country watered by lakes and streams: Strabo (xvii. 3) tells us that "some suppose that even the Nile-sources are near the extremities of Mauritania." Hence, too, the Nilides, or Lake of Standing Water in Pliny (v. 10) . For the most part they made a great central river traverse the northern continent from west to east, whereas the Arabian geographers of the middle ages, who were followed by the Portuguese, inverted the course. ”

“ With the Niagaras the river and the cataract were the most notable and impressive features of their territory. Their principal village bore the same name; and when we recall the proverbial vanity of the race, we can hardly doubt that this must also have been their tribal name. That it should have been perpetuated in reference to the village, the river, and the falls, and that the use of it, in reference to the tribe, should have lapsed, can be readily understood when we recollect that they had two substitutes for the tribal name. ”

“ The view is one long to remember:—the long curving shore, with the shadoofs and the workmen, singing as they dip; people in flowing garments moving along the high bank, and processions of donkeys and camels as well; rows of palms above them, and beyond the purple Libyan hills, in relief against a rosy sky, slightly clouded along the even mountain line. In the foreground the Nile is placid and touched with a little color.
We feel more and more that the Nile is Egypt. Everything takes place on its banks. From our boat we study its life at our leisure. ”

“ A second one is sent in the course of the night; and a third meets the old patriarch on his way to our boat at sunrise. It is necessary to impress the Oriental mind with the importance of the travelers who have arrived at the gate of Nubia.
The Nile voyager who moors his dahabeëh at the sandbank, with the fleet of merchant boats, above Assouan, seems to be at the end of his journey. Travelers from the days of Herodotus even to this century have followed each other in saying that the roar of the cataract deafened the people for miles around. Civilization has tamed the rapids. ”

“ Few sights that meet the eye of the traveller in the regions watered by the Nile are at once so striking and so splendid as that presented by a flock of these glowing creatures, as they dart in masses over the green fields of durrah, looking, when the sun sheds his rays upon them, like a multitude of aerial flames, appearing and disappearing almost with the rapidity of lightning, as they rise into the air or take refuge among the corn. ”

“ He established a national government, and he made Therach, the son of Nahor, his chief officer. When Nimrod had thus established his power he decided to build a city, a walled town, which should be the capital of his country. And he selected a certain plain and built a large city thereon, and called it Shinar. And Nimrod dwelt in Shinar in safety, and gradually became ruler over all the world; and at that time all the people of the earth were of one language and of one speech. Nimrod in his prosperity did not regard the Lord. He made gods of wood and stone, and the people copied his doings. ”

“ The forests gave place to jungles, which alligators, hippopotami, and the rhinoceros, made their haunts.
“It will not be long before we see the Niger,” said the doctor. “The face of the country always changes in the vicinity of large rivers. These moving highways, as they are sometimes correctly called, have first brought vegetation with them, as they will at last bring civilization. Thus, in its course of twenty-five hundred miles, the Niger has scattered along its banks the most important cities of Africa.” ”

“ We rode up the bank of the Tigris, and when we came opposite to Tell Nimrûd there, by good fortune, was a ferry-boat, plying across the river with the men and flocks of the Jebbûr. The cause of their migration to the left bank was hopping about our feet—locusts, newly issued from the rocky ground and swarming over every blade of grass and corn.
“In two days there will be no pasture, and our flocks will die,” explained an aged shepherd. “Let the consul cross!” he shouted, as the ferry-boat drew up beside the bank and half the tribe clambered into it. ”

“ For, the spirits of Nitre abounding in the Nile, when raised into the Air with the vapors, that exhale continually from this River, there is made out of their mixture, a Dew, that refreshes the Air, makes sickness to cease, and produces all those admirable effects, that make the Ægyptians wish for it so passionately. And the same spirits of Niter, being joyned to the Paste, and to the Mud, raise the one, and augment the weight of the other. ”

“ The sun shining through the pillars, which were thicker, and contained more sand apparently than any of the preceding days, seemed to give those nearest us an appearance as if spotted with liars of gold. I do not think at any time they seemed to be nearer than two miles. The most remarkable circumstance was, that the sand seemed to keep in that vast circular space surrounded by the Nile on our left, in going round by Chaigie towards Dongola, and seldom was observed much to the eastward of a meridian, passing along the Nile through the Magiran, before it takes that turn ”

“ Dinabandhu was perfectly aware that great harm would come to him if his authorship of Nil Darpan came to light, for, those Englishmen whom he served were great friends of Indigo planters. Further, in course of one's work at the Post office one had to come in constant touch with Indigo planters and other Englishmen. Their hostility might cause a man constant care and anxiety, if not injure his interests vitally. Dinabandhu knew all this, and yet he did not refrain from giving publicity to his Nil Darpan. ”

“ Those that are the best acquainted with Diodorus, Herodotus, and some other Greek historians, will find some very considerable difficulties removed; and they that are unacquainted with these authors, and receive from this work the first information of the geography, climate, and manners of these countries, which are little altered, will have no great occasion to regret they have not searched for information in more ancient sources.
The work begins with my voyage from Sidon to Alexandria, and up the Nile to the first cataract. ”

“ NIAGARA.
The Indians who first looked upon the world's greatest cataract gave the best idea of it in their appropriate name, "The Thunder of Waters." There is no setting provided for it in the charms of natural scenery; it has no outside attractions. All its beauty and sublimity are within the rocky walls of its stupendous chasm. The approaches from every direction are dull and tedious, the surrounding country being flat. The forests are sparse and there are few fine trees, these being confined to the verge of the 380 abyss, and being generally of recent planting. ”

“ And therefore they say that their kings by the help of such a multitude, left behind them in their great and wonderful works, eternal monuments of their state and grandeur; which we shall by and by distinctly treat of; but at present we shall speak of the nature of the Nile, and of the property of the soil.
18The Nile runs from the south towards the north from spring-heads hitherto unknown, for they are in the utmost borders of Ethiopia, where, by reason of the vast deserts, and extremity of heat, there is no coming. ”

“ Although, as we have already seen, living specimens of the Nilgai were long ago brought to Europe, little addition was made to our knowledge of this animal in its native state until the days of Elliot, Jerdon, and Hodgson. [99] In 1839 Sir Walter Elliot included the Nilgai in his catalogue of the Mammals of the Southern Mahratta country, where he states “it is found in the thick low jungles.” Jerdon, in his volume on the Mammals of India, tells us that the Nilgai “frequents thin forests and low jungles, but is also often found in tolerably open plains with only a few scattered bushes. ”