410 
LATERAL EMBANKMENTS. 
inexhaustible stores of the richest soil, and spread them out in 
plains above the reach of ordinary floods.* 
Consequences if the Nile had been Diked, 
If a system of continuous lateral dikes, like those of the Po, 
had been adopted in Egypt in the early dynasties, when the 
power and the will to undertake the most stupendous material 
enterprises were so eminently characteristic of the government 
of that country, and the waters of the annual inundation con¬ 
sequently prevented from flooding the land, it is conceivable 
that the productiveness of the small area of cultivable soil in 
the Nile valley might have been long kept up by artificial irri¬ 
gation and the application of manures. But nature would 
have rebelled at last, and centuries before our time the mighty 
river would have burst the fetters by which impotent man had 
vainly striven to bind his swelling floods, the fertile fields ot 
Egypt would have been converted into dank morasses, and 
then, perhaps, in some distant future, when the expulsion of 
man should have allowed the gradual restoration of the prim¬ 
itive equilibrium, would be again transformed into luxuriant 
garden and plough land. Fortunately, the “ wisdom of Egypt ” 
taught her children better things. They invited and welcomed, 
not repulsed, the slimy embraces of Nilus, and his favors have 
been, from the hoariest antiquity, the greatest material bless¬ 
ing ever bestowed upon a people.f 
* The sediment of the Po has tilled up some lagoons and swamps in its 
delta, and converted them into comparatively dry land; hut, on the other 
hand, the retardation of the current from the lengthening of its course, and 
the diminution of its velocity by the deposits at its mouth, have forced its 
waters at some higher points to spread in spite of embankments, and thus 
fertile fields have been turned into unhealthy and unproductive marshes.— 
See Bottee, Sulla condizione dei Terreni Maremmani nel Ferrarese. An- 
nali di Agricoltura, etc., Fasc. v, 1863. 
t Deep borings have not detected any essential difference in the quan¬ 
tity or quality of the deposits of the Nile for forty or fifty, or, as some 
compute, for a hundred centuries. From what vast store of rich earth 
does this river derive the three or four inches of fertilizing material which 
