EGYPT 245 



with here and there a camel caravan to give added 

 romance to the scene. 



Many centuries ago Herodotus wrote of Egypt 

 as " the gift of the Nile." That is as true of 

 Egypt to-day as it was when Rome was master 

 of the world. Over six thousand years ago 

 the Egyptians lived by the mercy of that river 

 which rises in the distant heart of Equatoria, 

 and spreads each twelve months a layer of alluvial 

 sediment, bears down gravel from the Abyssinian 

 mountains, and lays a kindly covering of rich 

 earth over barren rock and desert sand. In 

 Coptic, Egypt was called " Kemi," which means 

 " black-land," and any one who journeys to-day 

 from Suez to the capital may see how true it 

 is that Egypt is still, and ever will be, but the 

 offering to a needful humanity of a mighty 

 Providence and a noble river. 



It is after the desert battlefield of Tel-el-Kebir, 

 with its sand-dunes and trenches, has been crossed, 

 that the wondrous fertility of Lower Egypt 

 manifests itself in countless acres of brilliant 

 green lucerne, of clover, and beans and lentils. 

 Egypt, too, was the home of the papyrus, which 

 in days gone by supplied costly writing-paper 

 for the world, but in these times the cotton-plant 

 and the sugar-cane have superseded it. This 

 is one of the most wonderfully irrigated tracts 

 of country in the whole world, this gift land of 

 the paternal river. Millions of little canals, 

 aqueducts and waterways carry the precious 

 fluid to the fruitful acres cultivated by the fella- 

 heen. Here and there picturesque old water- 

 wheels give an added touch of Egypt the old, 

 the mysterious, the entrancing, to the landscape. 

 Now and then one catches glimpses of felucca 

 sails. 



