170 GEOLOGY AND HTSTORY 



wider than now. The details of this we have already 

 considered, and have seen that at this time the 

 Mediterranean was divided into two basins, and a 

 broad fringe of low land, now submerged, lay around 

 its eastern end. This was the age of those early 

 palaeolithic or palseocosmic men whose remains are 

 found in the caverns and gravels of Europe and Asia. 

 What was the condition of Egypt at this time ? The 

 Nile must have been flowing in its valley ; but there 

 was probably a waterfall or cataract at Silsilis in 

 Upper Egypt, and rapids lower down, and the alluvial 

 plain was much less extensive than now and forest- 

 clad, while the river seems to have been unable to 

 reach the Mediterranean and to have turned abruptly 

 eastward, discharging into a lake where the Isthmus 

 of Suez now is, and probably running thence into the 

 Red Sea, so that at this time the waters of the Nile 

 approached very near to those of the Jordan, a fact 

 which accounts for that similarity of their modern 

 fauna which has been remarked by so many naturalists. 

 I have myself collected in the deposits of this old 

 lake, near Ismailia, fresh-water shells of kinds now 

 living in the Upper Nile. If at this time men visited 

 the Nile valley, they must have been only a few bold 

 hunters in search of game, and having their permanent 

 homes on the Mediterranean plains now submerged. 



If they left any remains we should find these in 

 caverns or rock shelters, or in the old gravels belonging 

 to this period which here and there project through 

 the alluvial plain. At one of these places, Jebel 



