keep a greenish tint as far as the Delta. They are said to be poisonous,
and to give severe pains in the bladder to any who may drink them. I am
bound to say that every June, for five years, I drank this green water
from the Nile itself, without taking any other precaution than the usual
one of filtering it through a porous jar. Neither I, nor the many people
living with me, ever felt the slightest inconvenience from it. Happily,
this _Green Nile_ does not last long, but generally flows away in three
or four days, and is only the forerunner of the real flood. The melting
of the snows and the excessive spring rains having suddenly swollen the
torrents which rise in the central plateau of Abyssinia, the Blue Nile,
into which they flow, rolls so impetuously towards the plain that, when
its waters reach Khartum in the middle of May, they refuse to mingle
with those of the White Nile, and do not lose their peculiar colour
before reaching the neighbourhood of Abu Hamed, three hundred miles
below. From that time the height of the Nile increases rapidly day
by day. The river, constantly reinforced by floods following one upon
another from the Great Lakes and from Abyssinia, rises in furious
bounds, and would become a devastating torrent were its rage not checked
by the Nubian cataracts. Here six basins, one above another, in which
the water collects, check its course, and permit it to flow thence only
as a partially filtered and moderated stream. It is signalled at Syene
towards the 8th of June, at Cairo by the 17th to the 20th, and there its
birth is officially celebrated during the "Night of the Drop." Two
days later it reaches the Delta, just in time to save the country from
drought and sterility. Egypt, burnt up by the Khamsin, a west wind
blowing continuously for fifty days, seems nothing more than an
extension of the desert. The trees are covered and choked by a layer of
grey dust. About the villages, meagre and laboriously watered patches
of vegetables struggle for life, while some show of green still
lingers along the canals and in hollows whence all moisture has not
yet evaporated. The plain lies panting in the sun--naked, dusty, and
ashen--scored with intersecting cracks as far as eye can see. The Nile
is only half its usual width, and holds not more than a twentieth of
the volume of water which is borne down in October. It has at first hard
work to recover its former bed, and attains it by such subtle gradations
that