74 



Hartley ; Miss Simpson presided at the pianoforte, and Mr. G. B. 

 Eawcliffe contributed a reading. Through the influence of Mr. 

 James Lancaster, a collection of photographs had been procured 

 from the Manchester Geographical Society. The views repre- 

 sented scenes on the Niger and Gold Coast, and many of them 

 had been taken by Mr. Joseph Thompson, the celebrated 

 traveller. 



ON THE NILE : A PLEASURE TRIP. 



By J. WHITTAKER. October 4th, 1887. 



When Shakespeare's fat and witty knight requested his minion 

 Pistol, to deliver himself in the ordinary language of the world, 

 mine Ancient replied — 



A foutre for the world and worldlings base ! 



I speak of Africa and golden joys. 



And it is by no means easy to think of Egypt without the mind 

 becoming overcrowded with many and diverse images. This 

 feeling of painful fulness increased vastly in acuteness when we 

 first set foot in Alexandria, and made personal acquaintance with 

 a country which had rivetted our attention — long before we heard 

 of Greek art or Roman laws — when spelling slowly out the won- 

 derful story of Joseph and his brethren in our English Bible. 

 Later reading has told of monuments, still extant in this vast 

 storehouse of antiquity, erected as far before the Israelitish 

 sojourn as their times have preceded our own ; and evidence is 

 not wanting — nay, it is strong enough to be simply irresistible — 

 that before our cramped and ordinarily received chronology 

 admits of our First Parents' creation, the rehgion of Assyria 

 had reached rigidity, and the whole of Egypt, under Menes, the 

 founder, and succeeding kings, had been formed into a mighty 

 empire. Children's prattle, youthful emulation, mihtary dis- 

 cipline, settled laws, priestly and other orders, regular kingly 

 succession existed then, of the same nature, though not in the 

 same form, as now ; and childhood, manhood or womanhood, 

 marriage, parental affection, middle age, decrepitude, and the 

 grave, were parts of a common heritage. Here the traditions of 

 a great and disastrous flood, general and persistent elsewhere, 

 find no place, and the Nile for the last seven thousand years at 

 least has risen and fallen with surprising regularity, bringing 

 year by year, in greater or less abundance, rich soil and welcome 

 water to a practically rainless land. Then, as now, the land 

 outside the influence of this mysterious river was almost as life- 



