118 THE RIVER AND THE DESERT. 



CHAPTER III. 



THE NUBIAN DESERT THE GREAT SAHARA DESERTS OF AFRICA. 



As soon as we pass beyond the narrow borders of the Nile valley we 

 encounter the Desert. Egypt is, in fact, the Nile ; the Nile makes, 

 recreates, preserves, fecundates Egypt, which, without this grand and 

 ever-famous river, would immediately cease to be. 



" Everything in Egypt," says Miss Martineau,* with equal truth 

 and eloquence, " life itself, and all that it includes, depends on the 

 state of the unintermitting conflict between the Nile and the Desert. 

 The world has seen many straggles ; but no other so pertinacious, so 

 perdurable, and so sublime as the conflict of these two great powers. 

 The Nile, ever young, because perpetually renewing its youth, appears 

 to the inexperienced eye to have no chance, with its stripling force, 

 against the great old Goliath, the Desert, whose might has never 

 relaxed from the earliest days till now ; but the giant has not con- 

 quered it. Now and then he has prevailed for a season, and the 

 tremblers whose destiny hung on the event have cried out that all was 

 over ; but he has once more been driven back, and Nilus has risen 

 up again to do what we see him doing in the sculptures bind up 

 his water-plants about the throne of Egypt." 



The traveller, ascending the famous river which has so long been 

 mixed up with an apparently insoluble geographical problem, sees 

 the Desert everywhere present ; its yellow boundary-line is vividly 

 traced against the rich emerald-green of the fertile valley, and, as 

 he advances, that line seems to draw nearer and nearer, until 

 the cultivated soil appears reduced to a narrow strip on the 

 river-bank. It has encroached upon many once prosperous and 

 busy sites, and buried deeply the memorials of the old Egyptian 

 civilization. 



* Mias Martineau, " Eastern Life : Past and Present.'' 



