OVERFLOWING OF THE NILE. 



The swell of this river varies in different parts of its channel. In 

 Upper Egypt it is from 28 to 30 feet, at Cairo it is about 23 feet, whilst 

 in the northern part of the Delta it does not exceed 4 feet, which is owing 

 to the artificial channels and the breadth of the inundation. Yet the four 

 feet of increase is as necessary to the fertility of the Delta as the 23 or 

 30 elsewhere. The river begins to swell in June, but the rise is not 

 rapid or remarkable until early in July ; the greatest height is attained 

 about the autumnal equinox, and the waters remain nearly level until the 

 middle of October. After which the subsidence is very invisible, and 

 the lowest point is reached in May. These phenomena, however 

 striking, are by no means peculiar to the Nile ; they are more or less 

 common to all rivers whose volume is annually augmented by the 

 periodical rains which fall within the tropics; but there is no river, the 

 annual swelling of which is so replete with important, consequences, or 

 so essential to the existence of a nation. This is because Egypt depends 

 wholly upon the Nile for its fertility, and wherever the influence of its 

 inundation does not extend, there the soil is desert. Rain very seldom 

 falls in Egypt. The irrigation which the land receives by the direct 

 overflow of the Nile, and by the means of the canals which convey its 

 waters where the inundation does not directly extend, is quite essential 

 to that fertility for which Egypt has in all times been proverbial. 



The inhabitants of Egypt have, with great labour, cut a vast number of 

 canals and trenches through the whole extent of the land. These canals 

 are not opened until the river has attained a certain height, nor yet all 

 at the same time, as then the distribution of the water would be unequal. 

 The sluices are closed when the water begins to subside, and are gradually 

 opened again in autumn, allowing the waters to pass on to contribute to 

 the irrigation of the Delta. The distribution of the Nile water has 

 always been the subject of distinct and minute regulations, the necessity 

 for which may be estimated from the common statement, that scarcely 

 a tenth part of the water of the Nile reaches the sea in the first three 

 months of the inundation. These regulations must be obviously necessary, 

 where fertility so essential depends upon one great fertilizing power. 

 Lower Mesopotamia, which in the time of Herodotus competed the palm 

 of exuberant production with Egypt, is now a desert, in consequence of 



