MUD. 127 



country, won by degrees from the Mediterranean. At 

 the mouths the mud pours out into the sea and forms 

 fresh deposits constantly on the bottom, which are 

 gradually silting up still newer lands to seaward. Slow 

 as is the progress of this land-forming action, there can 

 be no doubt that the Nile has the intention of filling up 

 by degrees the whole eastern Mediterranean, and that 

 in process of time — say in no more than a few million 

 years or so, a mere bagatelle to tlie geologist — with the 

 aid of the Po and some other lesser streams, it will 

 transform the entire basin of the inland sea into a level 

 and cultivable plain, like Bengal or Mesopotamia, them- 

 selves (as we shall see) the final result of just such 

 sihing action. 



It is so very important, for those who wish to see 

 things "as clear as mud," to understand this prime 

 principle of the formation of mud-lands, that I shall 

 make no apology for insisting on it further in some little 

 detail ; for when one comes to look the matter plainly in 

 the face, one can see in a minute that almost all the big 

 things in human history have been entirely dependent 

 upon the mud of the great rivers. Thebes and Memphis, 

 Eanieses and Amenhotep, based their civiUsation absolutely 

 upon the mud of Nile. The bricks of Babylon were 

 moulded of Euphrates mud; the greatness of Nineveh 

 reposed on the silt of the Tigris. Upper India is the 

 Indus ; Agra and Delhi are Ganges and Jumna mud ; 

 China is the Hoang Ho and the Yang-tse-Kiang ; 

 Burmah is the paddy field of the Irrawaddy delta. 

 And so many great plains in either hemisphere consist 

 really of nothing else but mud-banks of almost incredible 



