UNWRITTEN HISTORY. 323 



It has often been said, and with perfect truth, that Egypt is a land 

 by itself, unlike any other part of the world. On approaching Alex- 

 andria from the sea, nothing can be less attractive than the flat shore 

 which stretches east and west ao far as the eye can reach, without an 

 elevation of more importance than bare and barren sand-dunes to 

 break its even line. This monotonous coast extends for two hundred 

 miles between the most extreme of the ancient arms of the Nile, from 

 the Canopic in the west to the Pelusiac in the east, and forms the 

 northwardly turned base-line of the triangular area of Lower Egypt, 

 the shape of which led the Greeks to call it the delta. 



In the journey from Alexandria southward to Cairo, the traveler 

 finds himself in a boundless plain, as flat as the flattest part of Lincoln- 

 shire or of Holland. At first, rising only here and there above the 

 level of the Mediterranean, it is full of morasses and stagnant lakes of 

 great extent, the waters of which vary from salt to fresh, and from 

 fresh to salt, according as the Nile or the Mediterranean is the predomi- 

 nant contributor to their contents. Beyond this region, the wide ex- 

 panse of black alluvial soil, intersected by innumerable water-courses, 

 departs from absolute horizontality, rising some three or four inches 

 in the mile. Here and there, low mounds bearing groups of date- 

 palms, or thickets of sycamores and acacias, indicate the deserted site 

 of an ancient city, or preserve from the periodic floods the assemblage 

 of hovels which constitutes a modern Egyptian village. In autumn, 

 the soil, save these mounds and their connecting dikes, disappears 

 under the overflow of the flooded Nile ; in early spring, the exuberant 

 vegetation of the young crops no less completely hides it under a 

 carpet of the brightest imaginable green. 



For more than a hundred miles, as the crow flies, this is the general 

 character of the country between Alexandria and Cairo. But, long 

 before the latter city is reached, the plain begins to be limited by dis- 

 tant heights which spring up on either hand. First, a ridge of low 

 hills makes its appearance on the western or Libyan side ; and then, 

 a range of more distant but bolder and loftier heights shows itself, far 

 away, on the eastern or Arabian horizon. "With every advance south- 

 ward the plain diminishes in extent, while its Libyan and Arabian 

 boundaries approach, until, at Cairo, they are not more than six or 

 seven miles apart. 



Nothing can be more sharply contrasted than the aspect of the 

 plain and that of its limitary heights. For the low, rounded ridges on 

 the west and the higher plateau with its steep and cliffy face on the 

 east are utterly waterless mere wastes of bare rock or sand without 

 a bush or a patch of soil on which it could grow, to veil their savage 

 nakedness. Under our own pale and faintly-lighted sky, such bare 

 hills and rugged cliffs as those which bound the prospect here and 

 everywhere in Upper Egypt would fitly represent the abomination of 

 desolation. But, framed as they are in an atmosphere of limpid purity, 



