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THE NILE CATARACTS. 
and fevered wastes, the sky is almost rainless, these things are death. 
It is the Nile alone, by its never failing munificence, gives life and 
shade, and sustenance to every living thing. 
But a the present of Egypt/’ which the old historian said the Nile 
had given, has meant a good deal more to man than the length and 
breath of the land that is watered by the river. It has meant his 
earliest civilisation, his first conception of the arts and sciences, his 
laws, his knowledge of justice. This has been the cradle of human 
thought. Rome borrowed from Greece, Greece from Egypt, and Egypt 
found in the waters and mystery of the river the fount of inspiration. 
I say the mystery of the river, for the things which are regarded by us 
in the light of peculiar characteristics were, to the ancients, mysterious. 
And yet the ancients knew a great deal about the Nile which we 
have only recently found out. They placed the sources of the river 
in the 10th degree of south latitude in a range of mountains which 
they call the Mountains of the Moon, but about 200 or 300 years ago, 
the child of that period, who had not a long time before become 
possessed of a new toy which he called type, or printing, imagined he 
could teach his parents many things, and among this new-found know¬ 
ledge was the source of the Nile which he fixed in the 12th degree of 
north latitude, cutting off at once about 1500 miles or so of the river’s 
length; but, as you know, the experience of recent travellers have 
set back the sources of the river, and its furthest south is now supposed 
to lie in about the 4th degree of south latitude, not so distant from 
where the old geographers declared it to be. Again in the matter of 
cataracts, the modern world having found Niagara and other great 
waterfalls in the western world, began to pooh-pooh the cataracts of the 
Nile, declaring them to have been much overrated; but if we examine 
what the ancients really did write about the Nile cataracts, we find 
that there was no exaggeration whatever either as to the volume of 
water or the steepness of the obstacle. Senaca thus wrote of the Nile 
cataracts :— 
“ This river, which at first glided smoothly along the vast deserts of 
Ethiopa, before it enters Egypt, passes the cataracts. Growing on a 
sudden, contrary to its nature, raging and violent in those places 
where it is pent up and restrained, after having at last broken through 
all obstacles in its way, it precipitates itself from the top of some rocks 
with so loud a noise that it is heard three leagues off. 
" The inhabitants of the country accustomed by long practice to 
this sport, exhibit here a spectacle to travellers that is more terrifying 
than diverting. Two of them go into a little boat, the one to guide, 
the other to throw out the water. After having long sustained the 
violence of the raging waves, by managing their boat very dexterously, 
they suffer themselves to be carried away by the torrent as swift as an 
arrow. The affrighted spectator imagines they are going to be 
swallowed up in the precipice down which they fall, when the Nile, 
restored to its natural course, discovers them again at a considerable 
distance on its smooth and calm waters.” 
Here then we have an exact picture of a Nile cataract. They are 
