DESCRIPTIONS OF EGYPT. 105 
travellers, and the descriptions which occur in the 
historians of Greece and Rome. Since the days 
of Herodotus, till that period when the philoso- 
phers of France, under the auspices of a great 
and daring military chief, surveyed its plains and 
-sandy wastes, Egypt has been described by nu- 
merous historians and travellers with every diver- 
sity of colouring and style. If the portrait, there- 
fore, is dissimilar to the original, it is not because 
the lines are feebly marked, but because the diver- 
sity of tints obscures the delineation. In order to 
acquire a general idea of this singular country, " a 
" stranger in the place of its situation," we must 
represent to ourselves an immense valley, six hun- 
dred miles long, descending from the heights of 
Syene, between two grey ridges of sandy moun- 
tains, that frequently approach within five miles of 
each other, till towards the sea it terminates in a 
vast plain, the extent of which is above three hun- 
dred miles. Through this valley flows the majes- 
tic Nile ; — now calm and tranquil, it retires within 
its ancient banks ; now reddened with the sands of 
Ethiopia, it overflows the plain, and sweeps the 
base of the mountains. From this periodical inun- 
dation, the country assumes in succession the ap- 
pearances of an ocean of fresh water, of a miry 
morass, of a green level plain, and of a parched de- 
sert of sand and dust. Along the Mediterranean, 
the shore is flat and low, nor is it till the mariner 
