2l8 TRAVELS IN UPPER 



be easy for him to avoid the danger, but too real, of 

 oversetting. He admitted all I said ; but still had 

 recourse to the ordinary argument of jog-trot igno- 

 rance : it is the common -practice. 



We encountered, during these two days of na- 

 vigation on the Nile, a very thick fog, which did 

 not disperse before ten o'clock in the morning, 

 when it fell in a very fine shower of small rain. 

 These fogs were the forerunners of winter. But, 

 by the word winter, is not to be understood that 

 sharp and cold temperature which, for several 

 months of the year, checks the progress of vegeta- 

 tion, and inches the human species so severely, 

 over the greatest part of our Europe. Hoar-frosts 

 are unknown in the climate of Lower Egypt. The 

 water is never congealed, and Nature never clothes 

 herself with that mantle of old age, under which we 

 would think her expiring, were we not habituated 

 to behold her regularly resuming her spring attire. 

 There, the winds from the sea, and the rains, only 

 cool the air, during the three winter months*, 

 without freezing the fluids, without rendering ar- 

 tificial heat necessary to man, without interrupting 

 the progress of vegetation, without the verdure's 

 ceasing to embellish the plains and to delight the 

 eye. 



* The months of November, December, and January. 



It 





