376 MOVING SANDS IN AFRICA, 



rets, to reflect that yonder were cultivated fields, that 

 there grew trees, that here were even the dwellings of 

 men, and that all has vanished. 



If, then, our continents were as ancient as has been 

 pretended, no traces of the habitation of men would ap- 

 pear on any part of the western bank of the Nile, which 

 is exposed to this scourge of the sands of the desert. The 

 existence, therefore, of such monuments attests the suc- 

 cessive progress of the encroachments of the sand ; and 

 those parts of the bank, formerly inhabited, will for ever 

 remain arid and waste. Thus the great population of 

 Egypt, announced by the vast and numerous ruins of its 

 cities, was in great part due to a cause of fertility which 

 no longer exists, and to which sufficient attention has 

 not been given. The sands of the desert were formerly 

 remote from Egypt ; the Oases, or habitable spots, still 

 appearing in the midst of the sands, being the remains 

 of the soils formerly extending the whole way to the 

 Nile ; but these sands, transported hither by the western 

 winds, have overwhelmed and buried this extensive tract, 

 and doomed to sterility a land which was once remark- 

 able for its fruitfulness. 



It is therefore not solely to her revolutions and 

 changes of sovereigns that Egypt owes the loss of her 

 ancient splendour ; it is also to her having been thus ir- 

 recoverably deprived of a tract of land, by which, before 

 the sands of the desert had covered it, and caused it to 

 disappear, her wants had been abundantly supplied. 

 Now, if we fix our attention on this fact, and reflect on 

 the consequences which would have attended it if thou- 

 sands, or only some hundreds, of centuries had elapsed 

 since our continents first existed above the level of the 



