O THE FIRST CATARACT]

From time to time waves of sand are borne over, and drown the narrow
fields of durra and of barley. Scraps of close, aromatic pasturage,
acacias, date-palms, and dom-palms, together with a few shrivelled
sycamores, are scattered along both banks. The ruins of a crumbling
pylon mark the site of some ancient city, and, overhanging the water,
is a vertical wall of rock honeycombed with tombs. Amid these relics of
another age, miserable huts, scattered hamlets, a town or two surrounded
with little gardens are the only evidence that there is yet life in
Nubia. South of Wady Halfah, the second granite bank is broken through,
and the second cataract spreads its rapids over a length of four
leagues: the archipelago numbers more than 350 islets, of which some
sixty have houses upon them and yield harvests to their inhabitants. The
main characteristics of the first two cataracts are repeated with slight
variations in the cases of the three which follow,--at Hannek, at
Guerendid, and El-Hu-mar. It is Egypt still, but a joyless Egypt bereft
of its brightness: impoverished, disfigured, and almost desolate.

[Illustration: 020.jpg ENTRANCE TO THE SECOND CATAKACT. 1]

1 View taken from the top of the rocks of Abusir, after a
photograph by Insinger, in 1881.

There is the same double wall of hills, now closely confining the
valley, and again withdrawing from each other as though to flee into
the desert. Everywhere are moving sheets of sand, steep black banks with
their narrow strips of cultivation, villages which are scarcely visible
on account of the lowness of their huts sycamore ceases at Gebel-Barkal,
date-palms become fewer and finally disappear. The Nile alone has not
changed. And it was at Philse, so it is at Berber. Here, however, on
the right bank, 600 leagues from the sea, is its first affluent, the
Takazze, which intermittently brings to it the waters of Northern
Ethiopia. At Khartum, the single channel in which the river flowed
divides; and two other streams are opened up in a southerly direction,
each of them apparently equal in volume to the main stream. Which is
the true Nile? Is it the Blue Nile, which seems to come down from the
distant mountains? Or is it the White Nile, which has traversed the
immense plains of equatorial Africa. The old Egyptians never knew.
The river kept the secret of its source from them as obstinately as it
withheld it from us until a few years ago. Vainly did