Nile Delta

“ The Nile Valley lies beyond the peculiar environmental zone of the hilly flanks of the crescent, and it is probable that the earliest village-farming communities in Egypt were established by a few people who wandered into the Nile delta area from the nuclear area. The assemblage which is most closely comparable to the catalogue of Hassuna or Judaidah, for example, is that from little settlements along the shore135 of the Fayum lake. ”

“ The boatmen, living either in the Delta, Cairo, or one of the great towns in Upper Egypt, and coming constantly loaded with merchandise, or strangers from these great places, make swift passages by the villages, either down the river with a rapid current, or up with a strong, fair, and steady wind: And, when the season of the Nile's inundation is over, and the wind turns southward, they repair all to the Delta, the river being no longer navigable above, and there they are employed till the next season. ”

“ Amidst these more favoring conditions on the borders of the Nile Delta it was inevitable that nomads, possessed of virile physiques, but hitherto restricted by lack of food and water, would rapidly multiply. The modern East presents many analogies. The alarm which, according to the biblical narrative, this increase aroused in the minds of the Egyptians is in perfect keeping with the fear with which the dwellers of the Nile always regarded the Bedouin. ”

“ The floods are then much higher and confined to a narrower space in the Nubian section of the Nile, while they gradually die out in the region of the Delta, where the excess seawards is discharged by the Rosetta and Damietta branches. In place of the old Nilometers, the amount of the rise of the Nile is now reported by telegraph from meteorological stations.
It is popularly supposed that at every rise the plains of the Delta are inundated, but this is not the case. The actual overflow of the banks of the river and canals is the exception, and when it happens is most disastrous. ”

“ Here we were unexpectedly greeted with an astonishing view of the Nile, the Delta, and the numerous groves in the neighborhood of Rosetta. The scene is beyond description. The sudden contrast it offers, opposed to the desert we had traversed, the display of riches and abundance poured forth by the fertility of this African paradise, with all the local circumstances of reflection excited by an extensive prospect of the Nile, and of the plains of Egypt, render it one of the most interesting sights in the world. ”

“ It will be noticed that the Tibu domain, with the now absolutely impassable Libyan desert [1117] , almost completely separates the Mediterranean branch from the Hamites proper. Continuity, however, is accorded, both on the north along the shores of the Mediterranean to the Nile Delta (Lower Egypt) , and on the south through Darfur and Kordofan to the White Nile, and thence down the main stream to Upper Egypt, and through Abyssinia, Galla and Somali lands to the Indian Ocean. ”

“ Indeed, there are valid reasons for the supposition that the dry land once extended far to the west of the present Levantine coast, and not improbably forced the Nile to seek an outlet to the north-east of its present delta—a possibility of no small importance in relation to certain puzzling facts in the geographical distribution of animals in this region. ”

“ That the outflow of the Nile once extended far beyond its present limits appears to be certain, for a long, deep, dry valley so like an ancient river-bed that the Arabs call it the Bahr-bela-Ma, or waterless river—runs from south to north in the Libyan desert along the western edge of the delta, and ends in the Mediterranean shore beyond Taposiris, far to the west of the Canopic mouth, the most westerly of the outlets of the Nile known during the historical period. ”

“ It was the prospect of the coming Reservoir and an increased water-supply in summer that urged on the engineers to make assurance doubly sure by placing the strength of that structure beyond all doubt. It is time to pass from the Delta to Assouan.
No country in the world tells its story more readily to the traveller than Upper Egypt. As he passes up the broad waterway of the Nile, he may survey the whole life of the land without stirring from the deck of his steamer. If he has been in Egypt before, he cannot fail to be struck by the growth of its prosperity ”

“ Away from the river, life is insupportable. It has often been said that the Nile is Egypt, and Egypt is the Nile. This is true, for the cultivable land of Egypt above the Delta is just a green strip a mile or two wide on each side of the river all along its course. On the margin is the encroaching desert, which only the waters of the Nile prevent from overwhelming the land. Where the waters of the Nile flow into the little irrigation canals and feed the fields, there abundant crops of cotton, sugar-cane, and other things are raised. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ He foresaw that stay-at-home geographers, who, with a comfortable armchair to sit in, travel so easily with their fingers on a map, would ask him why he had not gone from such a place to such a place? why he had not followed the Nile to the Luta N'zige lake, and from the lake to Gondokoro? As it happened, it was impossible for Speke and Grant to follow the Nile from Karuma:—the tribes were fighting with Kamrasi, and no strangers could have got through the country. ”

“ As we draw near, expecting hourly to see something of the temple, the Nile increases in breadth and beauty. It is a peaceful, glassy morning. The men have been tracking since dawn, and stop to breakfast at the foot of a sandy bank, wooded with tamarisks and gum-trees. A glistening network of gossamer floats from bough to bough. The sky overhead is of a tender, luminous blue, such as we never see in Europe. The air is wonderfully still. The river, which here takes a sudden bend toward the east, looks like a lake and seems to be barred ahead by the desert. ”

“ Going from point to point in other countries, one follows a thin line of road, railway, or river, leaving wide tracts unexplored on either side; but there are few places in Middle or Upper Egypt, and none at all in Nubia, where one may not, from any moderate height, survey the entire face of the country from desert to desert. It is well to do this frequently. It helps one, as nothing else can help one, to an understanding of the wonderful mountain waste through which the Nile has been scooping its way for uncounted cycles. ”

“ Although this stripe of land along the Indian Ocean, and afterwards along the Red Sea, was necessary to the shepherds, because they carried their merchandise to the ports there, and thence to Thebes and Memphis upon the Nile, yet the principal seat of their residence and power was that 386 flat part of Africa between the northern tropic and the mountains of Abyssinia. ”

“ 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 ”

“ Not all the influence of the sun, which has already past its zenith, and for many days has been as it were stationary within a few degrees of it over Syene, in the tropic of Cancer, can bring them one inch farther to the northward, neither do any dews fall there as might be reasonably expected from the quantity of fresh and exhalable water that is then running in the Nile, though it passes close by that village, and after, through that wild and dreary desert. ”

“ In fact, we know no river, north of the sources of the Nile, that does not fall into the Nile. Nay, I may say, that not one river, in all Abyssinia, empties itself into the Red Sea. The tropical rains are bounded, and finish in lat. 16°, and there is no river, from the mountains, that falls into the desert of Nubia; nor do we know of any river which is tributary to the Nile, but what has its rise under the tropical rains. It would be a very singular circumstance, then, that the Frat should rise in one of the dryest places in the globe, that it should be a river at least equal to the Nile ”

“ The plain lies panting in the sun—naked, dusty, and ashen—scored with intersecting cracks as far as eye can see. The Nile is only half its usual width, and holds not more than a twentieth of the volume of water which is borne down in October. It has at first hard work to recover its former bed, and attains it by such subtle gradations that the rise is scarcely noted. It is, however, continually gaining ground; here a sandbank is covered, there an empty channel is filled, islets are outlined where there was a continuous beach, a new stream detaches itself and gains the old shore. ”

“ The stream is narrow here, and the sand-stone cliffs come down on both sides to the water’s edge. In some places there is space for a footpath; in others, none. There are also some sunken rocks in the bed of the river—upon one of which, by the way, a Cook’s steamer had struck two days before. But of such a mass as could have dammed the Nile, and, by its disruption, not only have caused the river to desert its bed at Philæ, [176] but have changed the whole physical and climatic conditions of Lower Nubia, there is no sign whatever. ”

“ I do not comprehend what idea other travellers have formed of the beginning of the inundation of the Nile, as they seem to admit that the banks are not overflowed; and this is certainly the case; because the cities and villages are built there as securely as on the highest part of Egypt, and even when the Nile has risen to its greatest height they still are obliged to water those spots with machines. ”

“ On the night of St John, when the Nucta has fallen, that is, when they see the rain-water from Ethiopia is so mixed with the Nile that at Cairo it is become exhalable, and falls down in dews upon the earth, which till that time it never does, they then begin to cry, having five peeks of water marked on the Mikeas, and two unmarked for the sludge ”

“ 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. ”

“ My real wish was to descend the Nile in canoes from its exit from the lake with my own men as boatmen, and thus in a short time to reach the cataracts in the Madi country; there to forsake the canoes and all my baggage, and to march direct to Gondokoro with only our guns and ammunition. I knew from native report that the Nile was navigable as far as the Madi country to about Miani's tree, which Speke had laid down by astronomical observation in lat. ”

“ These are the pictures constantly recurring on the river, only they are never the same in grouping or color, and they never weary one. It is wonderful, indeed, how satisfying the Nile is in itself and how little effort travelers make for the society of each other. Boats pass or meet and exchange salutes, but with little more effusion than if they were on the Thames. Nothing afloat is so much like a private house as a dahabeëh, and I should think, by what we hear, that sociability decreases on the Nile with increase of travel and luxury. ”

“ The coming back thus, after an excursion in the felucca, is one of the many pleasant things that one has to remember of the Nile. The sun has set; the after-glow has faded; the stars are coming out. Leaning back with a satisfied sense of something seen or done, one listens to the old dreamy chant of the rowers and to the ripple under the keel. The palms, meanwhile, glide past, and are seen in bronzed relief against the sky. Presently the big boat, all glittering with lights, looms up out of the dusk. A cheery voice hails from the poop. We glide under the bows. ”

“ As far as southern Nubia, with the exception of the Oases in the Libyan Desert, the Nile is the only agent of productiveness. Beyond the narrow limits of his bounteous valley, there is little except red sand and naked rock, from the Red Sea to the Atlantic. ”