INTERIOR LAND CHANGES. 421 



down the hills with the impetuosity which an abrupt declivity of 1800 feet would give it. 

 What was most remarkable, the torrent, after coming within four feet of the house, had 

 divided into two branches, sweeping round it, and forming a junction within a few yards 

 of the front, so that a flock of sheep under the lee of the house were saved, while the 

 family leaving it perished. Every other part of the valley was covered with the 

 dislodged matter of the hills to the depth of several feet, and a person from the rear of the 

 house might step upon its roof with ease. The sides and summits of the mountains 

 presented immense scars and seams, from which masses of earth and rock, with the 

 vegetation upon them, had slid down. Some days afterwards, a small mass bearing a 

 thick pine forest was seen to be in motion, and after proceeding slowly from its place, it 

 began to totter, and then fell headlong into the valley. In accounting for this fearful 

 incident, which answered to what fancy pictures of the wreck of nature, it may be supposed, 

 that the previous hot seasons had so dried and cracked the ground, that the subsequent 

 rains found easy admission to a considerable depth below the surface, their violence 

 rapidly undermining the substratum, and the action of the wind upon the trees con 

 tributing to put the whole in motion. 



Turning to those parts of the globe where the sandy deserts are situated, a series of 

 changes are there in process, the wind perpetually altering the disposition of the sand, 

 and scattering it far and wide in flying clouds. Hence the domains of the desert have 

 in several places been extended since the date of authentic history, and many fertile spots 

 been converted into sterile regions. Cities and towns to the west of the Nile, flourishing 

 in the times of the Pharaohs, and even the Ptolemies, have been buried by the sand-drifts, 

 and more modern erections likewise, for the summits of minarets and mosques remain 

 visible above the surface. In the course of ages, the desert had so completely overwhelmed 

 the great temple of Ebsamboul, one of the most stupendous of those rock-hewn wonders 

 for which the ancient Egyptians were so famous, that of the four colossal statues in front, 

 sixty feet high, nothing remained visible but the solitary bust of one of these figures. It 

 required from July llth to August 1st, for Mr. Belzoni and Captains Irby and Mangles, 

 with their servants and some Nubian retainers, to eifect the clearance of the doorway, and 

 the accumulated sand Avas of so fine a description that every particle of it would have gone 

 through an hour-glass. Professor Jameson gives a statement from the Mercure de France, 

 written by a brother of M. de Luc, to the effect that the sands of the Lybian deserts, 

 driven by the west winds, have left no lands capable of tillage on any part of the western 

 banks of the Nile not sheltered by mountains. The encroachment of these sands on soils 

 which were formerly inhabited and cultivated is evidently seen. M. Denon informs us, 

 that summits of the ruins of ancient cities buried under these sands still appear externally : 

 and that but for a ridge of mountains called the Libyan chain, which borders the left 

 bank of the Nile, and forms, in the parts Avhere it rises, a barrier against the invasion, the 

 shores of the river, on that side, would long since have been uninhabitable. Nothing, he 

 says, can be more melancholy than to walk over villages swallowed up by the sand of the 

 desert, to trample underfoot their roofs, to strike against the summits of their minarets, to 

 reflect that yonder were cultivated fields, that there grew trees, that here were even the 

 dwellings of men, and that all has vanished ! Jameson remarks upon these statements, 

 that the great population of Egypt, announced by the vast and numerous ruins of its 

 cities, was in a great part due to a cause of fertility which no longer exists, and to which 

 sufficient attention has not been given. The desert was formerly remote from Egypt, the 

 oases, or habitable spots, still appearing in it, being the remains of the soils formerly 

 extending the whole way to the Nile, which the sands transported hither by the western 

 winds have overwhelmed, and thus doomed to sterility a land which was once remarkable 

 for its fruitfulness. He concludes, therefore, that Egypt owes the loss of her ancient 



