32 JOURNAL AND PROCEEDINGS 



true. We marvel at the Thames and Mersey, as thronged highways 

 of modern commerce ; at the beauty of the Rhine ; at the stretches 

 of the Amazon or St. Lawrence ; and at the Ganges, held in venera- 

 tion as a sacred stream by millions ; but the Nile has characteristics 

 which are unique and which surpass them all. Through that immense 

 region of desert which stretches from the Atlantic Ocean across 

 Africa and far into Asia, the Nile is the only river powerful enough 

 to force its way northwards from the equator to the sea. Starting 

 from the mountains which skirt the great central basin of Africa, the 

 Nile traverses in all a distance of four thousand miles. From the 

 confluence of the Blue and White Nile at Khartoum to the em- 

 bouchure of the river into the Mediterranean, it extends over fifteen 

 degrees of latitude, and, taking into account its numerous bends, 

 runs in that course about 1800 miles. A short distance below 

 Khartoum it receives one tributary, but after that, for more than a 

 thousand miles, it is fed by neither stream nor brooklet, as there is 

 nothing on either hand but an arid desert. As Leigh Hunt pictures 

 it in his beautiful sonnet : 



' ' It flows through old hushed Egypt and its sands, 



Like some grave mighty thought threading a dream, 



And times and things, as in that vision, seem 

 Keeping along it their eternal stands, — 

 Caves, pillars, pyramids, the shepherd bands 



That roamed through the young world, the glory extreme 



Of high Sesostris, and that southern beam, 

 The laughing queen that caught the world's great hands. 



Then comes a mightier silence stern and strong, 



As of a world left empty of its throng, 

 And the void weighs on us ; and then we wake, 



And hear the fruitful stream lapsing along 

 'Twixt villages, and think how we shall take 

 Our own calm journey on for human sake." 



From Kh^oum to the sea the Nile falls more than twelve hun- 

 dred feet, and as the geological strata dip from south to north the 

 higher up the river the older are the rocks. A thousand miles up 

 stream, the cataracts rush through Nubian granite and syenite, while at 

 the lower part of the river, from Cairo to Edfu, the rocks are of num- 

 mulitic limestone, so called from the myriads of coin-like shells they 

 contain. The pyramids were built of that limestone. Further up 

 the river than the limestone, but before the granite region is reached, 

 is the Nubian sandstone, which extends into the desert for 



