1380 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES. 
physical conditions resembled those prevailing on the banks of the 
White Nile to-day. (2) The deserts bordering the Lower Nile Valley 
on both sides were much more fertile, and their fauna and flora 
resembled that of the Taka country in Upper Nubia. Of the animals 
that frequented the wadies only the ass and the wild ox were capable 
of domestication. If man inhabited Egypt in pre-agricultural times— 
and there is no valid reason to suppose that he did not—he probably 
lived a wandering life, partly hunter, partly herdsman, in the fertile 
wadies that bordered the valley, only going down to the river to fish 
or to fowl or to hunt the hippopotamus. In the valley itself there 
was certainly no pasture-land for supporting herds of large or small 
cattle. It was probably also in these wadies that agriculture was first 
practised in Egypt. Even at the present day a considerable number 
of Ababdeh roam the wadies of the Arabian Desert between Keneh 
and the Red Sea, where, at certain seasons of the year, there is fair 
pasturage for small flocks of sheep and goats. I have myself seen 
many of these people in the course of several journeys that I have 
undertaken to the Red Sea coast: Some of these nomads sow a little 
barley and millet after a rain-storm, and then pitch thei tents for 
a while till the grain grows, ripens, and can be gathered. They then 
move on again with their little flocks. What the Ababdeh do on a 
very small scale the Hadendoa of the Taka country do on a much 
greater one. 
If we turn to the Taka country we see there people living under 
much the same physical conditions as those which must have prevailed 
in the Arabian and Libyan Deserts in early times. The inhabitants 
of the Taka country are Hamite, and, as Professor Seligman has pointed 
out,**® the least modified of these people are physically identical with 
the pre-dynastic Egyptians of Upper Egypt. I would suggest that 
they, like the fauna and flora of ancient Egypt, receded southwards 
under the pressure of the advance of civilisation, and that the physical 
conditions of the country have preserved them to a great extent in their 
primitive life and pursuits. The picture of the Taka as Burckhardt 
draws it would, I believe, describe almost equally well the earliest pre- 
dynastic Egyptians. This country, called El Gash by its inhabitants, 
has been described by Burckhardt.'* In his day the people there were 
in the transition stage between the pastoral nomad and the agricul. 
turist. It was a fertile and populous region. About the end of June 
large torrents coming from the south and south-west pour over the 
country, and in the space of a fortnight or so cover the whole surface 
with a sheet of water, varying in depth from two to three feet. These 
torrents were said to lese themselves in the eastern plain after inundat- 
ing the country, but the waters remained upwards of a month in Taka, 
and on subsiding left a thick slime or mud upon the surface. Imme- 
diately after the inundation was imbibed the Bedawin sowed their seed 
upon the mud, without any previous preparation whatever. The 
inundation was usually accompanied by heavy rains, which set in a 
short time before the inundation, and became most copious during its 
height. The rains lasted some weeks longer than the inundation; they 
were not incessant, but fell in heavy showers at short intervals. In 
