128 DESCRIPTIONS OF EGYPT. 
as to be incapable of retaining the dew, a few 
slender hardy shrubs, almost bare of foliage, creep 
along the ground, and produce as many thorns as 
leaves. When these shrubs cluster together, they 
form dismal solitary warrens, where the hares 
feed, and to which the antelopes, and zebus or wild 
oxen, retreat. On these level eminences, no other 
plants grow, but the shrivelled nitraria and hyos- 
cyamus, and the prospect is diversified only by the 
projections of the calcareous rock which emerge at 
very distant intervals. Such is the appearance of 
the level but elevated plain, of nearly thirty miles 
in breadth, which separates the valley of the Nile 
from that of the lakes of natron. The west wind, 
which blows here with great violence, has driven 
the loose sands of these eminences into the valley 
of the Nile. At the distance of four leagues from 
this ridge, another chain of eminences runs paral 
lei to the first, forming in the intermediate space 
a deep valley, furrowed with narrow and savage 
ravines. The declivity of the eastern ridge, which 
descends into this valley, is in some places abrupt,* 
and in others covered with loose sand. The watery 
expanse of the lakes, the vivid green colour of the 
plants which grow on their banks, and the reeds 
which wave on their surface, are finely contrasted 
* Sonnini's Travels, 4to, p. 337. 
