308 
u Now I ask you (said the Professor) to depict to yourselves that marvellous 
valley of the Nile, where these events took place 1,800 b.c. No doubt the 
passage is historical ; that is to say, that the Pharaoh therein spoken of, 
who had at his disposal so great wealth, and who was master of the civiliza- 
tion of the world at that time, thought fit to elevate one of his slaves, invest 
him with symbols of authority, and make him to ride in the second chariot 
of the land, — placed him in position, power, and authority next to himself. 
These things indicate great advances in civilization, and refinement, and 
luxury. Certain monuments of that era show horse chariots sculptured 
upon them, as in Joseph’s time, when there must have been a great civiliza- 
tion. Before that there existed a people highly civilized, but with whom 
are no traces of chariots or domestic horses : thus we suppose a great interval 
elapsed. Now, when we examine the records of the past, more than 2,000 
years before the Christian epoch, we find at Memphis, in the oldest pyramids, 
records indicating the high cultivation which existed then as now by the 
overflow of the Nile,” &c. 
He afterwards quotes Herodotus as saying — 
“ that this Nile valley was once a great arm of the sea, filled up in process of 
time by mud brought down by the Nile — this great Nile valley, 1,200 miles 
long— filled up by mud forced down the Nile. And unless you are prepared 
to deny this condition of things, that in the time of J oseph, and long before, 
this Nile valley must have been essentially what it is now, ask yourselves 
what period of time this process of filling up this huge arm of the sea must 
have taken.” 
In order to bring in tbis last allusion to the time of Joseph, 
I have extended this quotation beyond what strictly belongs 
to the present branch of our inquiry. But having done so, 
I feel some difficulty in commenting upon the strange matter 
it contains. I would fain copy from the moderation of 
Professor Huxley, when his “ courtesy ” (says the Saturday 
Reviewer) “ became almost distressing as his sense of truth 
“ forced him to unroll the long series of geological formations 
“ which had preceded the chalk” Only, I require all the 
courteous moderation I can command, to contract and roll up 
again, into rational and actual dimensions, the Professor's 
extraordinary extension of the land of Egypt, and the 
stretching of all that Herodotus has said, or could have con- 
ceived, about the valley of the Nile. The whole of Egypt, as 
well described by Herodotus, from the city of Elephantine to 
the sea, extends only from about 24° to 31° 30' N. Lat., i.e. 
to less than 8 degrees, or about 480 miles ! And instead of 
Herodotus dreaming that “ 1,200 miles of the valley of the 
Nile ” was ever “ an arm of the sea,” what he distinctly says 
is, that the space between the mountains below Memphis seems 
to him to have been formerly “ a bay of the sea ” {Enter, ii. 
10) ; or, as in another passage, “the land below Lake Moeris,” 
and perhaps a little above it {lb. ii. 4) ; and in another 
place, " a bay extending southward, and approaching, per- 
