22 ANNUAL ADDRESS : 



Shadoof. Another machine is a large vertical wheels called 

 Sdkiyeh, having round it a row of earthen pots. It is turned 

 by rude machinery^ generally moved by cows^ and the pots, 

 being filled in the river into which they descend, are emptied 

 into a trough, and the water carried away over the soil. The 

 ceaseless mournful creaking and groaning of the Sakiyehs 

 are familiar to every traveller, and seem to constitute one of 

 the chief glories of the Nubian peasant and the Egyptian 

 fellah, who would scorn to grease the axles and thus drown 

 the music, and who greatly prefer to put the grease upon the 

 matted locks of their own hair. 



I have thus attempted to give a general, but necessarily 

 brief and incomplete, sketch of the sources, course, and inun- 

 dation of the Nile. There are still, however, one or two points 

 of interest to be noted. 



The Upper Nile, from the place where it is joined by the 

 Atbara, flows, for the most part, with a very rapid cun^ent 

 through a narrow rocky ravine, shut in by cliffs of sandstone, 

 limestone, and granite, until it reaches the Cataracts of Syene. 

 The bed of the river is frequently broken by little islands, 

 rocks, and rapids. The latter are called Cataracts, and there 

 are six of marked prominence between Syene and Khartoum. 

 So long as the river is closely hemmed in, the current is swift 

 and broken, and the mud it has brought down from Abyssinia 

 and elsewhere is held in solution. During the inundation it 

 rises in some parts of Nubia as much as 40 feet, while at 

 Cairo the maximum rarely exceeds 26 feet ; and in the Lower 

 Delta it is not more than 4 or 5 feet. When the river passes 

 Syene and enters Egypt proper, the valley is much wider, the 

 current gentler, and the banks much lower. During* the 

 inundation the water spreads gradually over the flat country, 

 leaving, when it passes away and evaporates, rich deposits on 

 the surface of the ground. 



Another fact is noteworthy. In Egypt the deposit is left 

 in the river-bed as well as on the flat banks. The bed is 

 thus slowly rising, and the inundation extends proportionally 

 farther and farther outwards, materially increasing the ground 

 capable of cultivation. It has been ascertained, from careful 

 examination of the sites of the monuments on the plain of 

 Thebes, that the soil formed by deposits has, since the erection 

 of those monuments some 3,500 years ago, encroached on the 

 desert about one-third of a mile; while the ruins of Heliopolis 

 in the Delta, which once stood above reach of the inundation, 

 are now buried in mud deposit to a depth of nearly 7 feet. The 

 traveller also observes that many of the villages in the Delta 

 are perched on mounds, composed mainly of the debris of older 



