530 
DIVERSION OF THE NILE. 
tion, if not the absolute extirpation of its inhabitants. This is 
the calamity threatened by the Abyssinian princes and the fe¬ 
rocious Portuguese warrior, and feared by the sultans of Egypt. 
Beyond these immediate and palpable consequences neither 
party then looked ; but a far wider geographical area, and far 
more extensive and various human interests, would be affected 
by the measure. The spread of the Nile during the annual in¬ 
undation covers, for many weeks, several thousand square 
miles with water, and at other seasons of the year pervades 
the same and even a larger area with moisture by infiltration. 
The abstraction of so large an evaporable surface from the 
southern shores of the Mediterranean could not but produce 
important effects on many meteorological phenomena, and the 
humidity, the temperature, the electrical condition and the at¬ 
mospheric currents of Northeastern Africa might be modified 
to a degree that would sensibly affect the climate of Europe. 
The Mediterranean, deprived of the contributions of the 
Nile, would require a larger supply, and of course a stronger 
current, of water from the Atlantic through the Straits of Gi¬ 
braltar' ; the proportion of salt it contains would be increased, 
and the animal life of at least its southern borders would be 
consequently modified; the current which winds along its 
southern, eastern, and northeastern shores would be dimin¬ 
ished in force and volume, if not destroyed altogether, and its 
basin and its harbors would be shoaled by no new deposits 
from the highlands of inner Africa. 
In the much smaller Ped Sea, more immediately percept¬ 
ible, if not greater, effects, would be produced. The deposits 
of slime would reduce its depth, and perhaps, in the course of 
ages, divide it into an inland and an open sea ; its waters 
would be more or less freshened, and its immensely rich ma¬ 
rine fauna and flora changed in character and proportion, and, 
near the mouth of the river, perhaps even destroyed altogether ; 
its navigable channels would be altered in position and often 
quite obstructed; the flow of its tides would be modified by 
the new geographical conditions; the sediment of the river 
would form new coast lines and lowlands, which would be 
