212 Sir J. Gardner Wilkinson on the Nile, and 



Blue River possesses a remarkable character, which connects 



it more closely with the inundation, and claims for it the me- 

 rit of being the parent of the beneficial qualities of that river 

 which spreads fertility throughout its coiurse from Abyssinia 

 to Egypt. 



The White River brings no such alluvial deposit: the 

 sandy soil of its banks is unsuited to many of the produc- 

 tions which flom'ish in the other branch ; and though its ad- 

 ditional stream, rising about the same time as the Blue River, 

 tends to raise their combined waters over the lands they fer- 

 tilize in their course northward, the Egyptian peasant has 

 merely this debt of gratitude to acknowledge ; and the prayers 

 of a heathen husbandman might be offered to the supposed 

 god of the Abyssinian branch for the blessings of the inunda- 

 tion, without his being bound in duty to propitiate the presid- 

 uig deity of its western companion. The Blue River has the 

 same general character as that observable throughout the 

 course of the Nile. Its banks in Ethiopia and Egypt are 

 formed of the same rich alluvial deposit brought from the 

 mountains of Abyssinia, and the principal difference is in the 

 greater thickness of the stratum left in the southern part of 

 its course, in consequence of the heavier particles subsiding 

 more quickly than those lighter ones wliich are carried on- 

 wards in its course to Egypt. 



To give some idea of the manner in which the alluvial de- 

 posit takes place, and the changes it causes in the levels of 

 the land, and in the bed of the river itself throughout its 

 coiu^e, I must first observe, that the bed of the Nile and the 

 land of Egypt (to which country I shall now confine my re- 

 marks) imdergo a gradual increase of elevation, varying in 

 different places according to circumstances, and always les- 

 sening in proportion as the river approaches the sea. This 

 increase of elevation, in perpendicular height, is much smaller 

 in Lower than in Upper Egypt ; and, in the Delta, it dimi- 

 nishes still more, so that, according to an approximate cal- 

 culation, the land about Elephantine, or the first cataract, in 

 Lat. 24° 5', has been raised nine feet in 1700 years ; at Thebes, 

 in Lat. 25- 43', about seven feet ; and at Heliopolis and Cairo, 

 in Lat. 30', about five feet ten inches. At Rosetta, and the 

 mouths of the Nile, in Lat. 31° 30', the diminution in the per- 



