511 
THE NILE CATARACTS. 
BY 
MAJOR-GENERAL SIR W. BUTLER, K.C.B., 
Commanding South-Eastern District. 
(A.-A, and for Boat Service, Nile Expedition , 1884-85.) 
(A Lecture delivered at the Royal Artillery Institution, Woolwich, Thursday, 18 tk March, 1897J 
Major-General J. F. Maurice, C.B., in the Chair. 
Among all tlie rivers of the world the Nile may fairly claim to be 
the most celebrated. Its name goes back in the history of man 
further than that of any other river; in fact it was long known by 
the simple appellation “ river.” When people wished to speak of other 
rivers they put names to them, as the river Jordan, the river Tiber, 
just as to-day, when Western Americans desire to specify various 
wines they say Port wine, or Sherry wine, or Madeira wine, but 
when they invite you to take Champagne they simply call it a wine ”; 
the illustration may appear somewhat wanting in dignity, and perhaps 
I should apologise for using it. 
Nor, if we reflect a moment on the nature of the Nile, as compared 
with any other river that is known to us, can we wonder at its celebrity 
among the early nations of the Mediterranean. 2500 years ago 
Herodotus wrote that “ Egypt was a present from the Nile.” That 
was literally and soberly true. Not only has Egypt been made out 
of the sand and silt of the Nile, but Egypt owes its yearly, its daily, 
life to the continuance of that river. 
Take away this life-giving water even for a single year, and man, 
beast, bird, fish, must disappear. It is this one principle of life, made 
always present through every sense to man in Egypt, that gives to it 
a meaning of home, food, and even raiment, which is nowhere else 
found associated into a single object, but is in other lands divided or 
diffused over a hundred objects. Nor is that all—everywhere else in 
Egypt, except where the Nile water flows, man sees the evidences of 
pitiless surroundings ; the sun blazes above him, the desert is on every 
side of him, the wind often comes with the furnace breath of the hot 
10. VOL. XXIV. 
