GEOGRAPHICAL. ASPECTS OF THE NILE LYONS. 497 



has shown that this may amount to as much as 3,500 cubic feet per 

 second between Khartoum and Wadi Haifa at the lowest stage of the 

 river. As the whole discharge is not more than six or seven times 

 this amount at this season, it is not an unimportant factor. 



The remaining portion of the Nile basin, consisting of the valley 

 below the Aswan cataract and the delta, differs very markedly from 

 the regions which have been referred to. A valley of rich alluvial soil, 

 some 5 to 10 miles wide and 600 miles long, and a delta of the same 

 character, now supports an agricultural population of exceptional 

 density, which numbers on the average about 1,100 persons to the 

 square mile. This tract of country possesses very marked character- 

 istics, which have undoubtedly affected in a high degree the customs, 

 the habits, and the character of its inhabitants. As a watered valley 

 in the midst of an absolutely arid region, it must have been occupied 

 in very early times, and when the remains of paleolithic man in the 

 valleys and on the desert margins have been more fully collected and 

 studied, it should be possible to glean important information concern- 

 ing his occupation of this part of the world. At that early time the 

 valley was probably occupied for the most part by jungle and marsh, 

 conditions approximating somewhat to those of the Bahr el Jebel of 

 to-day, and early man may have lived on the desert margin, fished in 

 the river, its lagoons, and backwaters, and hunted and trapped ani- 

 mals in the jungle which bordered them, mucli as the Dinka negro 

 does to-day. The earliest representations that we j^ossess of the an- 

 cient inhabitants show, in their crowns, their ornaments, their cere- 

 monial dress, and so forth, evident traces of their former occupations 

 of hunting and fishing before they became an agricultural people. 

 As the deposit of silt by the waters of the annual inundation contin- 

 ued, the banks of the river would be gradually built up, the flood 

 plains would extend at the expense of the lagoons, and land within 

 reach of water would become available for agriculture ; and from that 

 time onward the yearly cycle of operations, the inundation of the land 

 by the annual flood, the sowing on the wet mud as soon as the water 

 drained off, the harvest in the early summer months, and the period of 

 waiting from then until the river began to fall after the next flood, 

 repeated itself year after year and century after century without 

 appreciable variation. 



In the rainless climate of this region, weather, as we know it in 

 northern Europe, may be said to be nonexistent — one day is almost 

 exactly like the next and the one before it. The flood may be a little 

 higher or a little lower than in the previous year ; occasionally it may 

 fail or be dangerously high, but in the course of centuries these slight 

 variations are of small effect, and the conditions of life in Egypt are 

 exceptionally constant — a water supply with a regular seasonal varia- 



